Chapter 225: National Credit Collapse
Driven by immense market sentiment, the foreign exchange rate of Galan Coin plummeted.
Since the video of the fleet's disastrous defeat had been released on news media, everyone in the Star Alliance now knew that Galan was in big trouble.
Rumors of an impending massive war indemnity payment to Cangyuan also spread like wildfire.
This led to no one in the foreign exchange market being willing to take over Galan Coin; many people were selling, but no one was buying.
If no one bought, the price could only continue to be driven down, until it reached a level that would make people consider speculating on a bottom.
After the apocalypse, the Star Alliance's foreign exchange trading mechanism was very direct, much simpler and cruder than during the golden age, and also much more fragile.
Those who had believed Prime Minister Nadi's deception and had previously “bought the dip” with large amounts of Galan Coin could only agonizingly appeal to the Galan government, hoping they could act quickly to help reduce their losses.
However, at this moment, the Galan government, true to form, made an extremely selfish, irresponsible, and dim-witted decision.
They refused to respond to urgent proposals from multiple factions, refusing to stabilize the exchange rate by repurchasing their own currency.
At the same time, the Galan Commonwealth announced the closure of all foreign exchange trading windows, no longer providing services for exchanging Galan Coin for star alliance credit points, and also prohibited any outflow of star alliance credit points held by their domestic institutions and citizens.
In addition, Prime Minister Nadi immediately significantly raised the prices of a series of strategic resources, including zero element, attempting to offset the profit reduction caused by currency devaluation and prevent large-scale predatory procurement of cheap domestic resources.
They acted completely unyielding, as if they had won.
At this point, the last outflow channel for Galan Coin was also closed.
This was tantamount to telling everyone that Galan Coin was finished, that they were throwing caution to the wind, with no intention of remedial action or compensation, and that everyone holding this currency should eat dirt!
You can lose money if you want, I will never lose.
Galan Coin is issued by me; to me, it's just waste paper. I can print it as much as I want. As for the truly valuable star alliance credit points, sorry, I won't exchange a single cent for you.
Hehe!
This immediately infuriated everyone.
Thus, amidst a chorus of curses, the true cliff-like collapse of Galan Coin began.
Within one trading day, its market value plummeted by two-thirds, truly heading towards becoming worthless paper.
When Prime Minister Nadi finally realized he was on the verge of losing control, and that this collapse of national credit would prevent him from ever buying any advanced weapons and equipment in the future, and would trigger catastrophic inflation domestically, he, like a child, canceled all previous decisions overnight.
The series of actions left the Star Alliance's economists dumbfounded.
Are you not happy unless you cripple yourselves? Isn't the loss of one defeat enough?!
At the same time, this also made Yi Mo Qun Qing realize something.
The entire Galan government, from top to bottom, had no one who knew how to deal with a crisis.
In other words, this civilization lacked the cohesion to withstand war and disaster, and was probably more fragile and easier to collapse than the Executive Officer and other players had anticipated.
In a society rebuilt after an apocalypse, this was simply incredible, making one wonder what kind of environment Galan had grown up in to reach its current state. On the other hand, cangyuan coin became even more sought after in the foreign exchange market, with its exchange rate against star alliance credit points rising to 1.21.
When people were surprised to discover that Anya had quietly purchased another 30 billion cangyuan coin through financing before the news segment aired, they understood something.
Cangyuan Future Technology's partner in New Hope was none other than this Queen of Purgatory!
They did not choose the official Chamber of Commerce.
Conservatively estimated, Anya had already gained a massive paper profit of at least 7.5 billion star alliance credit points by leveraging the information asymmetry from knowing the war's outcome in advance.
Many people vowed that no matter what this Lady Queen of Purgatory did in the future, they would follow her aggressively.
As for Galan and their damn Prime Minister Nadi, to hell with them!
The credibility of this faction was completely ruined.
After the fleet battle video was made public, the usually boisterous and highly skilled Galan media fell into a mysterious silence, directly ignoring the news content broadcast by New Hope TV and offering no comments.
It was as if the great battle in the Li Star System had never happened, everything was as usual, and the sun rose as normal.
In the New Hope Space Station, the only noticeable change was that the previously active Galan Victory Lecture Group had vanished overnight, no longer seen.
The lavish lecture platform adorned with colorful brocade was quietly dismantled, and propaganda posters celebrating “victory” were also removed from streets and alleys, cleaned up exceptionally well.
The day after the battle, Cangyuan, having won the war, used the expectations of a large number of foreign exchange speculators, including Anya, as leverage to acquire 120 billion star alliance credit points from the Star Alliance, almost like getting something for nothing.
This figure even exceeded Cangyuan's current total economic output, truly hot money, and actually very dangerous.
To maintain normal financial order and avoid a false prosperity, Lu Yuan, following his butler's advice, only took out 13% of it to purchase the materials he needed in the Star Alliance market.
Even at only 13%, that was a massive sum of 15.6 billion star alliance credit points, enough to initiate a super-large-scale foreign trade procurement round.
Lu Yuan immediately sent invitations to all employees, encouraging them to speak freely about what Cangyuan needed most right now.
Later, the discussion expanded to the player community, with many cloud players also participating.
【Bei Hai Xian Yu】: “We need laborers!”
Everyone had their own opinions, but Xian Yu calculated an account for everyone.
According to the valuable telemetry images previously obtained from the Mechanical Hive, Li Star alone had over 70 extremely rich large-scale mining sites, with Red Iron Mountain being just one of them.
If all of them were put into initial production at one-third of Red Iron Mountain's theoretical maximum capacity, each mining site would require at least 300 workers and Engineers, 6 SCVs for surface excavation, plus a massive amount of mining mechanical spiders, industrial drones, and no less than 500 humanoid robots.
In addition, the extracted minerals needed to be processed on-site, and then the mining site would need a logistics system to transport the products to where they were needed.
This would require an additional 500 personnel.
That's already 800 engineering personnel, plus management and logistics, each mining site would roughly need 1,000 people. 70 mining sites would mean 70,000 laborers.
And the corresponding manufacturing industry practitioners, conservatively estimated, would be ten times that number.
Even with the help of artificial intelligence, just the initial development of a single Li Star, with the current total population of 450,000 in the Desert, would be far from enough.
Not to mention there were other planets and asteroids in the Li Star System, and other star systems along the wormhole route.
Winning against the Punishment Fleet brought a series of chain reactions; the 10 closest star systems along the route to Li Star had actually been brought under Cangyuan's control and could be regarded as “core territory” for development.
And beyond these 10 star systems, continuing along the route would lead into the area monitored and protected by the New Hope Space Station.
That area had a dense network of routes and numerous star systems, so in theory, future cooperation in development could also be discussed.
New Hope's pillar industries were shipping, ports, and shipbuilding, and they didn't have much energy or interest in cosmic development, especially mining development.
These tasks were too arduous and tiring for them; how could they compare to making money by sitting in an office and negotiating deals.
Joint development might just suit their intentions, just like how the British helped the Norwegians develop the North Sea oil fields in reality. As for the hidden backyard represented by Emerald Star, there's even less to say; its hinterland depth could very well be far greater than 10 star systems.
In short, a rough estimate showed that fully developing Cangyuan's existing territory would definitely require millions of laborers, possibly even tens of millions.
The importance of population to a civilization began to become apparent.
Besides laborers, a sizable local defense force was also indispensable to protect one's assets.
Cangyuan needed external intervention, needing to achieve a population surge in a short time through contracting, overseas recruitment, or attracting immigrants.
After discussion, Lu Yuan tentatively finalized the second round of procurement plans.
This time, in addition to civilian equipment, he also planned to purchase a moderate amount of high-end weapons; these two items would cost one-third of the 15.6 billion, or 5.2 billion star alliance credit points. The remaining 10.4 billion would be used to purchase services from Star Alliance enterprises and trade fleets.
Subsequently, through a bidding process, they would be invited to develop the 10 star systems along the route, striving to create a prosperous trade route.
After the plan was announced, the players in the branch who were committed to becoming great merchants became busy again, each going to survey the market and find quality suppliers.
On Li Star's side, after a full day of busy work, the battlefield scavenging and clearing was finally completed, and the analysis of several important spoils of war also yielded results.
On the Xianyang, Jubian, holding the organized data, found Lu Yuan to report the gains.
