Chapter 475 Loan Shark
The Church of Gold Coin encourages people to participate in transactions and will naturally support various types of lending.
Of course... there are clear requirements for loans supported by the church. For example, borrowers need to provide collateral in kind to avoid losses when lenders are unable to repay the loan. The interest on loans between private individuals cannot be higher than the interest on loans from the church - that's right, the Gold Coin Church also lends money to nobles, merchants and even civilians. Most of the fields, land and houses owned by the church are mortgaged by prodigal nobles or bankrupt merchants, and a small number of them are purchased to seal sealed objects or high-risk areas.
Not only are loan sharks and gambling debts with interest rates exceeding the limit not protected by the church, but they will also be interfered with by the church if they are exposed - the reason is very simple. The starting point of the Gold Coin Church's support for lending is to encourage (physical) transactions, not to encourage "finance".
Under normal circumstances, when a country noble (or his steward) lends money to a local commoner, the annual interest rate cannot exceed 30%... which means if you borrow ten gold coins this year, you can repay a maximum of thirteen gold coins next month.
If the interest rate is higher than this, local civilians will likely be unable to repay and go bankrupt, which will be harmful to the stability of the parish and jeopardize the church's source of tithes.
Although the legal annual interest rate of 30% is not low, it is still within the acceptable range in the view of the Gold Coin Church... After all, the lender will eventually bear the risk of bad debts, so it is reasonable to get a little more profit.
However, the same old saying applies - every policy has its own countermeasure.
Lending and borrowing within the Gold Coin Parish with an annual interest rate of over 30% has never ceased; gambling loans, which are not "legal" in the first place, or short-term capital turnover between nobles, usually do not follow this rule.
When nobles (and their stewards and servants, etc.) lend money to commoners, the annual interest rate will not be based on the church 's requirements... Most commoners are illiterate anyway, and they have no idea what is written on the IOU when they borrow money; after knowing that they have suffered a great loss, most commoners just swallow their anger and do not have the courage to offend the nobles and make a big deal out of it.
Of course, civilians are not stupid either.
In a normal gold coin parish, most rural farmers would not borrow money from nearby country nobles when they were in urgent need of loans, but would rather go a little further to the city to borrow from the church. Many small priests in the city often had to do part-time work managing loans. When villagers went bankrupt and could not repay their debts, it was usually these small priests who went to the countryside to count the villagers' mortgaged land.
When town residents need to borrow money, they are often more willing to borrow from merchants or churches.
Captain Miles could understand after a moment's thought about the unusual situation in which a large number of villagers in the White family, no, Blackrock Village, which was not far from the city, owed debts to neighboring nobles (stewards) .
Two hundred years ago, the Territory of Tachia was once ravaged by war, and the Gold Coin Church failed to stop the war in time; although the church did make amends afterwards and sent out the Knights to fight... it eventually lost the support of the people.
Not to mention... there is a group of feudal nobles between the church and the local people.
Captain Miles could guess without asking what kind of language that group of feudal nobles would use to intimidate and intimidate the civilians and weaken the authority of the church - the rampant cult problem in the Taqiya Territory was clearly there!
The Geketan family was overthrown, and the owners of Lars City and Creek City changed, but the people of Black Stone Village were still vague about the actions of "Master Bud", the loan shark who symbolized the country aristocracy, and did not dare to complain about the "outsider" casually. The formation of this inertial thinking was not achieved overnight.
Captain Miles felt a nameless anger rising quietly from deep within his heart.
It was true that being treated as a "consumable" by the Holy Land did make this staunch Night's Watchman feel resentful, but the Gold Coin Church was still sacred in his mind.
Captain Miles still found it difficult to remain calm after seeing the current situation of Black Stone Village with his own eyes and seeing how alienated and heartbroken the local parish residents were from the church.
After having a simple lunch at the White family's house and saying goodbye to Mrs. White, Captain Miles found the talkative coachman and his son again.
Seeing the taciturn coachman father, Captain Miles politely but slightly forcefully pulled the man, who had just sold the salt of the dead and was standing in his yard feeding the horse, into his house.
"No offense, I have something I want to ask you." Captain Miles closed the door of the coachman's house and took out the night watchman's identity book. "Please allow me to reintroduce myself. I am the night watchman of Creek City. You can call me Miles."
The driver stared at the photo in the night watchman's ID book in shock for a while, and when he looked at Captain Miles, the man was visibly restrained.
"Please rest assured that no one other than your son will know about our conversation." Miles glanced at the young boy who followed his father into the house and softened his tone. "Please forgive my impoliteness. I don't have much time. How many local villagers owe money to 'Master Bud'?"
The driver was so nervous that he dared not raise his head as Captain Miles stared at him: "I'm sorry... sir, I... I don't know exactly, probably more than half of the families? My family is also..."
Miles then asked, "Did you take the initiative to borrow money from 'Master Bud'?"
The driver looked up at Miles in surprise, his face full of panic.
"Don't worry, you won't be retaliated against for telling the truth." Captain Miles spoke faster. "There is no noble named Bud in Wilkie Town. Bud should just be a steward of a certain family. As you know, the lord of Creek City has been replaced. After the new city hall arranges for the prisoners of war, it will conduct a strict investigation of all the nobles in the fiefdom. Neither Bud himself nor his master will have the time to retaliate against anyone."
The people of Tachia have indeed lost trust in the church due to historical issues, but in the eyes of most civilians, the Night Watchmen are still trustworthy and respectable guardians - even this coachman who lives in the countryside has heard many folk stories about how the Night Watchmen eliminated dangers in the dark and protected the safety of the town.
After struggling for a while, the driver finally spoke up, gritting his teeth and saying, "Of course... not, sir. Some families did borrow money out of necessity, but many did not, at least not ours."
"After my son was born, I wanted him to learn business and become a businessman in the future... so I decided to save money to buy a horse. When our family finally saved enough money, my wife and I were ready to go to the cattle and horse market in town to choose a pony-"
"...Master Bud came with his servant and insisted on selling the farm's horses to me. The remaining amount can be considered as my temporary debt... Just charge me some interest every month." The driver paused for a moment and said with hatred, "We didn't pay off the money we owed for the horses until last year."
Captain Miles felt the veins on his forehead throb.
Lending money is actually a good "business". As long as the principal and interest can be recovered, the profit can be guaranteed. It is more stable than any other business.
But there are actually not that many people who need to borrow money or can borrow money - the vast majority of ordinary people with families and jobs would rather tighten their belts than ask for a loan when they are in financial distress, and those who need to rely on borrowing money to make a living often cannot produce any physical objects to mortgage.
In other words...if you want to do well in the "business" of lending, you have to study how to lend money to people who can provide physical collateral (land, real estate, etc.) - even if the other party goes bankrupt, the value of the collateral itself can offset the principal and interest.
Since he had already spoken, the driver no longer concealed anything and simply told several families what he knew.
Some families were in similar situations to the coachman's family, being forced to buy and sell and falling into debt; some families were dragged into gambling while working on the farm, and were blinded by debt; some families suffered from natural disasters, failed to collect autumn taxes, or could not afford seeds, and had to borrow money from Bud to pay taxes...
"This is outrageous!" Captain Miles became more and more furious as he listened.
At the same time, at Bud's farm.
"It's outrageous!"
He kicked a large wooden box angrily, using so much force that his toe bones were broken and a layer of skin was peeled off.
"What's going on?" Miaobishenghua poked his head over from the side.
Give Me Medicine pointed at the wooden box angrily and cursed: "Look at this, such a secret place to put a treasure chest and put a box of waste paper?! What a lunatic!!"
"No way?" Miaobishenghua walked into the secret room in confusion, "Isn't this the treasure hiding spot in the boss room? Did the planner forget to refresh the props?"
As he spoke, he squatted down, rummaged through the "waste paper" in the solid wooden box, picked up one and looked through it.
Although the players in the matrix cannot communicate with the "NPCs" outside the matrix, they have no problem understanding the universal text. He flipped through a few of them and said in a bad tone, "Damn... they are all IOUs, house deeds, land deeds, etc. They are poisonous. What's the use of this crap?"
If players want to obtain a piece of land or a building and have a private teleportation point there, they can only obtain it from the NPC after fulfilling some "hidden requirements" that are not stated in the system - for example, the house of the three elders in the closed beta test in Dutata City was exchanged for prisoners captured during the attack on Dutata City.
When they attacked Creek City, the three elders failed to successfully capture the "Commander BOSS" with the greatest value, and Lahong and his men captured it. Then those guys used this BOSS to exchange for a fiefdom of several hundred acres (Yang Qiu randomly pointed to a place in the uninhabited mountainous area in the southern part of Tachia Territory)... which made Qin Guan jealous for a long time.
"Forget it, at least the mission is accomplished." Miaobishenghua threw the "waste paper" back into the box with disgust, said to him with a pained look on his face, "Take medicine." The two of them walked out of the secret room one after the other.
Outside the secret room... is Butler Bud's bedroom.
The bedroom was in such a mess that it was unbearable to look at... All the items that could be sold to NPCs for recycling had been looted by the players. Even the gold foil edging on Bard's wife's dressing mirror had been pried off by the players with a dagger.
There's no way around it. This game is nothing like traditional games where you can "gather trash and sell it for money"... The items that can be exchanged for game coins from NPCs must be "props" that can be identified by identification techniques.
Fortunately, most of the "monsters" that players have to kill have a good life, and if you clean up their "nests", you can earn a lot of hard-earned money ...
I walked out of the messy master bedroom, passed the even messier living room, and the study that had been turned over, and came to the living room.
A group of players carrying bulging bags were chatting and relaxing while carrying the tied-up Bard family, including the personal servants and other "red-name monsters" out of each room...
