April 6: And What Goes Around (17 page)

"Have you talked to him about it? Is he going to accept them?"
April wondered.

"Oh yes," Jeff smiled. "It's bizarre. When I explained
it to him he started snickering and then escalated to gasping laughter. He's
going to meet a fellow at ISSII on the first of November and pay him for an
orbit to orbit vehicle and a bunch of support equipment. That's what I was
doing that I couldn't go to dinner with you the other night. Buying in on this
deal. He said the fellow is Austrian and refused a check in payment drawn on
any Home bank. He looks down on our lack of regulation and deposit insurance,
our arrogance in issuing our own money, and demanded a cashier check from a
European bank or EuroMarks cash. No USNA dollars or other currency either. 
He's a rabid chauvinist. Dave's
delighted
to pay the man in these
EuroMarks."

"Are you going to release them to Dave early then? They warned
you not to, though I can't see how they'd ever find out. But Dave needs them
at
ISSII
on
the first, right?" April asked.

"I'm going to send a bonded courier with him on the shuttle and
Dave will sign for the bag when they get to ISSII," Jeff said. "By
the time they arrive it will be the first of the month and he can take
possession of it there."

"Have you told Irwin at the Private Bank of Home? I mean, they
didn't swear you to secrecy or anything did they?" April asked.

"They have no real handle on me to ask," Jeff said. "It
was their error. I do think they would have cared a
lot
more if this had
happened earlier in the month. Then if I talked it could cost them some real
money. But yeah, I told Irwin and he's scrambling to drop EuroMark holdings. He
has more Earth customers and exposure than us with transfer accounts at several
Earth banks. It's just too late to do much about it. The market action the last
two days now makes this a side issue anyway.

"They have quietly swept up about as much of the circulating
currency as was practical. I doubt he can get physical EuroMarks delivered back
to Earth now before the switch. Or old style ones here for that matter. Any
longer and there would have been shortages of physical cash they couldn't cover
up. Some illegal businesses only run on cash and even being illicit it would be
talked about if they suddenly had no customers. Not that much circulates
compared to the past. A lot of people use their bank card for
everything
,
right down to a cup of coffee or a bus ride. They've encouraged that everywhere.
Not just with the EuroMarks."

"If not much circulates then the logical next step is to apply a
negative interest rate to actual bank accounts, not just cash," April
decided.

"They did that briefly, about seventy years ago," Jeff said.
"It pretty well cleaned the banks out of deposits. There was a huge bank
run. Once a few countries did it within days of each other you didn't have to
be a genius to see they would be stealing your deposits pretty soon if they
hadn't already. It made them change the laws so banks could operate with
no
deposits. They already had bypassed any real reserve requirements by holding
your funds in sweep accounts and only crediting your demand account with
whatever you walked in to withdraw. No bank this century has actually had the reserves
the regulations used to demand. They resented even the two or three percent
they needed to hold in actual vault cash to function with the public, but
getting completely rid of cash has never been accepted."

"They'll get rid of cash when politicians stop taking
bribes," April predicted.

"It took almost twenty years before banks would accept deposits
again and pay interest on them instead of charging to hold it. Big businesses
went back to their own vaults and armored trucks and pay envelopes with cash
like in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. If a business couldn't do that
their prices went up – a lot. Some of them took to issuing company script. And
it took a while longer before the common people would use banks again. There
wasn't any trust. A lot of people of that generation
never
trusted banks
again," Jeff said.

"Then it's going to happen again," April assured him,
immediately convinced in her own mind.

"Maybe, it's kind of hard to look back at it and say if the crash
caused the bank closings or if the bank closings caused the crash. It sort of
swept along from time zone to time zone and country to country over a week,"
Jeff told her. "The stuff I've read doesn't all agree and the Americans
blamed the Europeans and the Europeans blamed the British, and the Arabs blamed
everybody but themselves... "

"What are
we
doing about it?" April demanded.

"I already issued a notice to our customers that we don't trade
in Earth currencies until further notice. That per our contracts for their
accounts, anything other than Solars are payable in those currencies only on a
one by one special approval. How much cash are
you
holding?" Jeff
asked April.

"Maybe twenty or twenty five thousand EuroMarks. Hardly any USNA
Dollars but quite a few Tongan Pa'anga."

"Spend the EuroMarks if you can," Jeff suggested. "The
Dollars... I don't know. I can't see how the Europeans can do this and the USNA
not do the same. The value has to stay in balance for trade to continue. I'd
spend the Dollars too," he decided. "The Pa'anga are the best bet.
I've heard so much about the king. I can't imagine him doing this. And if his
currency rises in value it isn't like they depend on exporting local made goods
for their economy. They pass through
our
goods... "

"What? You look stricken," April said.

"More worried.
Our
money is going to be overvalued. It's
going to be really hard to sell our stuff to Earth," Jeff predicted.

"I can't think of anybody here I'd give EuroMarks knowing they
are going to decline in value. That would just feel crooked to me," April
said.

"Go home and order stuff up from Earth," Jeff said with
sudden conviction. "I'd pay for expedited shipping,
not
standby.
It's already late to be doing this. If they lift it you have the cash to
settle. You can send it in a courier pack if I can't do a transfer for you. I'm
not sure what's going to happen, but the few EuroMark accounts I have I can
cover. They should be
easier
to cover if I have to buy EuroMarks to do
so, because I expect them to drop in value faster than their face discount
schedule. You can transfer the risk to the customer but they are not all
stupid. They
will
book the coming discount in if you insist on paying
them with this crap."

"I don't especially
need
anything right now," April
protested. "My dad is stocking up on things."

"Order anything you
will
need. Or trade goods. Bed linens,
freeze dried food, coffee, clothing, good whiskey. If you have to pile it in
your living room you'll thank me in a couple months. You can always send it on to
Central standby. I'm going to go do that myself right after lunch. It will be
worth something and the currency won't." Jeff looked really anxious,
chewing at his lower lip.

"OK, I can see that. It'll be hard to find enough stuff to spend that
much on though," April said.

"Buy some old gold coins if you run out of other stuff. Stuff
with numismatic value. The coin dealers will ship on an unrevokable Visa. It's
the same as cash and they are going to be wanting cash with everything so
uncertain. You can settle your account in Earth money. That's why the card
company is bonded. It won't be handy next week, but it will be in the long run,
believe me," Jeff said.

"Oh, I always believe you," April told him. "I wouldn't
be running home and doing this if it was anybody else telling me."

"You might want to spread the orders around. Too big an order at
one place might raise alarm bells," Jeff suggested.

"They'd be better off to shut down and hoard their stock wouldn't
they?" April asked.

"Yes, but they won't," Jeff assured her. "Well, maybe
one in a thousand. But most people like us who have never
seen
a real
crash? No way. Most people have a very hard time believing anything can happen
they haven't seen before themselves."

"What you said about our money being too valuable... I want to
suggest our money is too
big
. We need some fractional denominations too.
We need to be able to trade with people who don't have the means to convert a
whole Solar or make change against it," April said.

"I've had a couple other people make that complaint. I'd pay more
attention to it if I had more metal than people want Solars. But I know that
will happen eventually. I could make a quarter Solar. Below that I'm
uncomfortable with how small a tenth Solar or less is physically. They'd be
difficult to handle and hard to verify their authenticity," Jeff said.

"Earthies put serial numbers on bank notes. Couldn't you do
something similar?" April asked.

Jeff considered the problem and didn't answer quickly. "I've seen
coins sealed up in plastic. We could seal the smaller coins in sapphire or
diamond and they need never get worn or lose weight. You could enclose a chip
powered by ambient light that you can interrogate with a laser and it responds
with an LED. Each test resets the chip to a new value, it's called TOTP
authentication, so recording the test sequence doesn't give you the ability to
counterfeit.
Much
better than just stamped serial numbers. We can make it
very
hard to break. We just need to release a free app to let your phone
do validations."

He frowned. "People would have to trust us because as the
authority you
could
invalidate a coin remotely. A government could
invalidate all their coins held in another nation."

"Well yeah, for fiat money, but ours they could bust it open and
extract the metal," April said.

"Good point," Jeff allowed. "On second thought, a Solar
is twenty five grams. Fractions of that make awkward numbers. That's why I
didn't use the Troy ounce. I'll just issue ten gram, five gram and one gram
pieces. I'll call Alex at Trick Proto and ask him to run off a couple
prototypes. I know he can do diamond coated sapphire optics. I already have a
few chips that can do the verification. A lot of people have bio-hazard
scanners on their phones. I'll make sure the same sort of hardware can
interrogate these chips. Satisfied?" he asked April.

 "Yes, that's the sort of thing I had in mind. Although I suspect
you may end up making a half gram or even a tenth gram coin."

"With a twenty five gram Solar coin we just absorbed cost of
striking it. We issued them at whatever the spot price of the metal was in the
currency they were exchanging. But making
much
smaller coins, especially
with embedded electronics minting costs are going to be an issue in large
numbers. I'd have to actually charge more than the value of the metal to issue
the coin. I'm not sure people will support that," Jeff said.

"You are competing with currencies that have a
depreciation
schedule
," April reminded him indignantly, pointing to the stack of EuroMarks,
"and you doubt people will pay a little fee upfront for a currency with
physical value that can't be counterfeited? If it's a bad deal it's the least
bad choice I'd think."

"OK, put that way I think you may be right," Jeff agreed. "People
do
pay a small premium for bullion coins already." He riffled the
bundle of bills. "I can see where once these are announced everybody else
is going to be falling all over themselves to do the same thing. I'll listen to
you on this and at least do some prototypes. I'll do them in gold first though.
This seems more targeted to Earth markets and Home has been absorbing every
full size platinum Solar I can make."

"Thank you. Now, would you please humor me and finish your
sandwich. You've taken
one
bite," April complained.

Jeff blinked at the sandwich like he wondered where it came from. It
did have one solitary crescent  missing. "Yeah, but I finished the soup. I
don't remember eating it but I must have." He pushed the empty bowl away,
heaved a big sigh, and pulled the sandwich back in front of him. "Tell
Ruby to order up whatever she can too," he suggested.

"She still has a lot from when we thought the UN was going to
boycott us," April informed him. "I remember her telling me she blew
the whole year's budget at once, and my dad approved it. She bought staples
like pancake mix and dried eggs. They may have done it again already."

"It's been a year. If she has a new budget released tell her to
do it again. And if your dad balks tell her to have him call me. Maybe I should
be talking to him anyhow," Jeff decided.

"There is only so much pancake mix it makes sense to own. I'm
sure she'll add some variety. Some Spam undoubtedly," April added, teasing
him mercilessly. Jeff was not fond of Spam.

Jeff took another bite and looked at his
sandwich. "They can corned beef too, don't they?"

* * *

"April I need
to know something," Jon said. She was still in the cafeteria and she split
his image in her spex so she could still see her plate. He looked unusually
concerned.