Ch. 1484 The Financial Holy Sword Unsheathed: Netherland Kingdom, Prepare to Die! (Part 3)

Concentrate forces to attack in one direction, eliminating the enemy’s living forces.

The fleet of the Netherland Kingdom does not need the [Demon Slaying Order] to deal with, nor do they need to be physically killed.

Because behind the Netherland fleet is a bigger bomb.

This “financial bomb” can not only mentally destroy the expedition fleet but also economically devastate the entire country!

Wearing a red gown that resembled a blazing fire, Catherine had been waiting for these words for a long time, leaping up and excitedly waving her fist:

“Watch me.”

[Finance] divine position activates, projecting the fiery scene of the Netherland Kingdom in the garden.

As early as a few months ago, led personally by Catherine, elegant and noble new varieties of tulips quickly became popular among the upper echelons of the Old Continent.

Noble ladies wearing a tulip treasure on their evening gowns became a symbol of status and identity; the rarer the species, the more sought after it became.

Royal Nobles and the rich and powerful scrambled to buy the most rare tulip varieties.

Demand exceeded supply, demand continued to rise, supply did not increase, and naturally, prices continued to soar.

In the Royal Capital of Kingston, a stem of the best tulip once auctioned for the equivalent of 110 ounces of gold, about 3,118 grams, making countless people go mad.

Wealthy people in the Netherland Kingdom, led by the Remit people, all joined in the revelry.

Yet no one noticed that as October gradually came, true flower enthusiasts and court procurement staff had quietly withdrawn.

All that was left were speculators hoping to get rich overnight.

By this stage, everyone buying tulips no longer did so for their intrinsic value or ornamental use, but in the hope that their prices would rise indefinitely and they would profit from it.

The bubble blown by Catherine finally spiraled completely out of control.

Everyone in the Netherland firmly believed the “tulip fever” would last forever.

Wealthy people from all over the world would send orders to the Netherland Kingdom, and no matter what the price, someone would foot the bill. The people of the Netherlands, receiving such dividends, would completely bid farewell to poverty.

Everyone would be a millionaire.

In the worldview of the Remit People, where all others were seen as slaves, it was perfectly reasonable for other nations to support them.

Thus, whether it was Nobility, merchants, citizens, farmers, craftsmen, boatmen, attendants, store staff, or even chimney sweeps and old women in second-hand shops, all joined the tulip speculation frenzy.

Officers, who had relatively high incomes yet found it hard to save money, were no exception, and even with war looming, they could not resist the opportunity to make a quick buck.

In short, regardless of social class, people all converted their assets into cash and invested in these flowers.

The price of tulips gradually reached a startling level, with total increases as high as 5900% compared to the previous year!

A black tulip known as “Night Queen” fetched a price converted to as much as 500 gold pounds.

This amount of money was enough to buy a mansion by the Amstel Canal in the Royal Capital Amsterdam, and the average annual income of Netherlanders was not much better than the original Hightins, barely 12 pounds.

But this was no longer the auction price Catherine set up as a show, but the normal market price! Everyone recognized it!

By this point, the collective subconscious, pushed by Byron and Catherine’s “Invisible Hand,” even the top banking groups and investment institutions of the Remit people could not sit still.

Relying on their relationship with [Protector of the Realm] Cromwell, they joined forces with the Tulip Guild and collectively entered the fray, almost monopolizing the business from the source.

Armed with lots of funds, they purchased standard futures contracts due in next September from those manors at high prices, as well as some bulbs reputedly obtained from the West Coast by certain maritime merchants.

In the process, they also transferred both the bullish expectations for the futures and the risk of decline into their own hands.

By mid-October, many banks and major institutions had pulled most of their liquidity, converting money into “bulbs imported from the West Coast” and next year’s futures contracts.

The hottest winter trading days for tulips gradually unfolded at this time.

Catherine connected with her capable cadres from her financial sequence, using this opportunity to give them a lesson, her voice pleasant yet cold:

“Finance cannot create wealth, it only transfers wealth. Wherever finance becomes more developed, wealth will increasingly concentrate in the hands of a few. You must remember well that as long as there is enough money in the financial market, any asset can be speculated to astronomical prices, causing the bubble to swell rapidly. After sucking in a lot of the poor’s money, reap it all at once. This is undoubtedly a mechanism designed to prevent the poor from accumulating wealth; for most of the poor, except for a few geniuses, getting rich through this is nothing but a pipe dream. I wield the sickle; no one wants to be touched by it, but the scent of leek emanating from you never lies. The poor have no accumulation of original capital. It seems possible to obtain wealth through finance, but at this point, if nothing unexpected happens, then an accident is bound to occur. The Matthew Effect stacks upon itself, and the wealth of countless people will effortlessly be transferred into others’ hands. Everyone, start the inflation.”

The term Matthew Effect comes from the chapter “Matthew’s Gospel” in the Book of Creation, which describes a common social psychological phenomenon: “Advantage tends to generate more advantage.”