“Persuasive?” Stoner chuckled. He had gone in to see Mike Stearns about maybe writing some stuff up to go to the doctors in Venice and Padua and Florence and so on, and maybe make himself available to do seminars and classes for visiting alchemists who wanted to raise their game. If he had time, he’d thought, he might volunteer to train some folks up to teach basic chemistry of some kind. Pay forward a little, he’d thought.
When he came out, he’d agreed—he wasn’t quite sure how, but he was certain he had agreed—to learn Italian, decamp his family to Venice for a year, give lectures until his throat was dry and his feet hurt to, as it turned out, chemists and doctors and alchemists and natural philosophers and heaven only knew what else from all over Europe who wanted to hear the new learning from Grantville but thought Venice was a much less chancy prospect for a working vacation than Germany in wartime. They had heard some alarming stories about Croats, it seemed.
Not that Stoner was complaining after the event, of course, what with Venice being a nice town and some of the professors being great guys. But Benjamin was still talking.
“—and so the underwriting and market-making rules proved to be good innovations, and the most widely practiced. Here and at the Antwerp Bourse they have been making daily quotes in this way for nearly six months now. It remains only to persuade the Wisselbank at Antwerp to issue proper banknotes instead of just deposit certificates, although with the manner of their recent move they can hardly be blamed for feeling inclined to conservatism.”
“Eh? What about our greenbacks?” Stoner frowned. He actually liked those notes, not least because making the fast green ink was a good, solid government contract and they’d actually gone with his joke of putting Johnny Cash on the twenty-dollar bill. Hopefully that’d make people take the stuff less seriously, although he’d had long and bitter experience of how that kind of dream usually turned out.
“Keep up, Stoner,” said Sharon. “We don’t spend those outside the USE, we buy them. Because of the exchange rate it’s cheaper to borrow Wissel notes. They’re as good as bullion and everyone knows that. They absolutely do not issue notes for silver they don’t have, and their letters of credit are watertight. We spend greenbacks where they will buy the most.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Stoner had an awful feeling that he was going to get an answer.
Benjamin saw his chance. “This is about a marvelous concept you had up-time called the money supply. You see, deposit certificates and bills for title to specie are well known in these times. Since Sweden uses those foolish copper plates for money, they must perforce use notes or spend more in carting their money around than it is worth. Now, if we can persuade the Wisselbank to go over to a fidu—”
Stoner straightened up. Time, he felt, to put into practice a little of that business management stuff he’d read about and mostly laughed at. Decisive, that was the key.
“I think I’ve heard enough,” he said. “Benjamin, have we broken any laws?”
“No, signor,” said Benjamin, plainly taken aback.
“Good. Sharon, is all the stuff we’re doing going to, you know, help people get medicines and stuff?”
“Yes, Stoner.”
He nodded and resolved that he would discuss the assorted warlike uses of zinc with her later.
He turned to Magda. “Magda, I think I’ve signed everything. Would you come for a walk with me?”
Magda grinned and practically skipped to his side as he stepped around the table toward the door.
Once outside it, he dropped from the straight-backed, square-shouldered, chin-lifted pose he’d struck. “Man, that is so, so, not where I’m at,” he sighed in relief.
Magda nuzzled up to him. “But, Tom, mein schatz, see how it is you can be a tough and purposeful man of affairs?”
“Sure,” he drawled, “I just don’t want to make a habit of it, okay?”
“Just from time to time,” she said, squeezing him a little harder.
“All right. Except I think tonight we should rent a boat and get some wine and go out on the lagoon in the spring moonlight, and maybe smoke a little. You know, stars, moonlight, rippling water. Because otherwise I’m going to get a haircut and start acting serious and probably get a regular job. Or something.”