Financial News Of The Archipelago 3

[MonMarty]

The first act of the Open Ocean Guild to deal with a new round of economic woes, is by purchasing quantities of gold in an anticipation of a gold price hike. Whether the rumors were substantial or not is still unclear and the market seems pretty stable, so for now, the Open Ocean Guild simply made an investment. Only time will tell if this investment is to pay off. The woes and highs of the Wodenstaff financial troubles would continue, even into this period. The Guild's opposition against the price floor was successful, cancelling the government's plans to fund the merchants for safe business. This did however mean that the price for wood in particular remained artificially low and no letting up was expected any time soon. The potentially most self harming decision that was taken, was the decision to cut larger timber up into smaller sizes for ease of storage and transport. This however, cut down the actual buyers market to that of hobbyist wood cutters and carvers of clock making and smaller furniture production. The two major markets, house construction and shipbuilding, now completely avoided purchasing quanties of the Wodenstaff wood, crashing their sales to a mere trickle rate. Ironically enough, this did rebounce some of the timber price by 20% as the Wodenstaffs had effectively self-sabotaged their own supply and thus decreased the supply of lumber globally. The decision to rent out charcoal kilns however, was a hugely successful idea. In fact, the majority of this now "large industry" useless smaller cut wood was used to turn into charcoal which was now adequately filling the void left behind when the Lampero coal mines shut down. The Wodenstaff business bounced back into green digits within a short amount of time as coal was an especially desireable product in the market right now with the upcoming war and the chances for shortages. A more disasterous decision however was to try and force woodworkers into the pelt industry, as well as a deal with the Laveer shipping and storage. The switch of expertise into a field that was highly dominated by the Calemberg businesses led to an Archipelago wide embargo of Wodenstaff goods and trades in the entire region of Calemberg, as well as severely botched products. The wood workers were rough men not trained to handle delicate pelts and often destroyed the pelts in the process of attempting to separate them from the animals. Worse yet, the signing away of transport rights and levying over storages to the Laveer company caused severe civil strife in the Wodenstaff barony, as well as among her employees. With the recent changes, the Wodenstaff financial burdens had effectively been wiped out, but they were replaced with angry employees, international pressure from a trade embargo by a much larger union of businesses and riots among workers that had been put out of work in favor of a contract with a "foreigner".

In summary:

• Wodenstaff financial burdens are gone.
• Wodenstaff suffer civil strife in their lands/workers as a result of the changes.
• No roof price is set for commodities and the government stays away from intervening in market pricing, nor does the government support a proportional tax model.

Two new guilds enter the global market, the "El Beneficio" led by Lorenzo Martinez, with families Vixen, Martinez, van Vichten, de Santigo and de Baccarod in support. The other guild is the Edelweiss Foundation, led by Philip Kade (who is not appealing or part of the Kade consortium but acting independently), with the families Durant, d'Eluise, Tzavaras, Faralu and Geaeth'orn in support.

New Scenarios for all Guilds:
With the arrival of two new guilds, the financial battlefield was diversifying. Worse yet, the Financial Ministry had just decided to create its own advisory board of members in which they sought one particular guild to represent the business endeavors. In order to test businesses based on merit of functionality, all guilds who wished to attain this position of advisory to the Financial Ministry were challenged to come up with a Financial model for the the re-investment of the "lost lands". The guilds were challenged to take several decisions on some matters:

• Whether to enforce self sufficiency or artificially make colonies dependent on Regalia.
• Whether to drive high tarriffs on trade, or institute a flat financial tax.
• Whether to provide tax breaks in the short run, or a low burden relief in the long run.
• Whether to provide migration grants to new workers, or encourage education of locals.
• Whether to lower the base commodity of food products to colonial levels, or to allow the merchants to maintain their own price which could result in food shortages but more income for the merchants.
• How to deal with the changed political playing field in the colonies. Respect the old institutions? Try to enforce an oligarchic family council system? Create an entirely new noble hegemony? The choices were up to the Guilds.

The financial model plan that the Financial Ministry would like best would receive the advisory position, which would allow any guild to silently steer the policy of the Financial Ministry as a whole, and indeed receive financial benefits.

As this matter held the entire financial world in anticipation, all other markets and events seemed to be non-existant at this time. As such, all guilds would focus their entire attention on developing a structurally sound financial agenda for the lost lands.

@0Sullivan , @Film_Noir, @TheBioverse You have until sunday afternoon my time to finish your reports. There is only one subject for you all to deal with, the above challenge.

 

[Silent_Ruler]

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