“Wait a minute,” Judy said. “All that’s fine, Sarah, but in the meantime we need to make sure that people will take it. The American dollar went over so well partly because people looked at it as a piece of artwork, an engraving. They didn’t know Abe Lincoln from Abe Vigoda or George Washington from Curious George, but they could see the quality of the engraving. They could see the detail. You guys have seen the gold backs.” She was referring to the paper money printed by the Holy Roman Empire, now the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The printing sucked. They were printed in yellow and black ink on beige paper, and the yellow ink was barely visible. That applied to all of the notes, the reichsthaler, the goschen and the pfennig. It even applied to the new “mark” note that was to be the worth of a Cologne mark of silver. “We can’t have that. We need something that will be really hard to counterfeit, and we need it to be visually impressive.”
“So what do you want to do?” Susan asked.
“I want to let Heather Mason back in Grantville know what we want and have her come up with designs. You know she’s tied into the whole art community. Then we’ll have plates made up of the hardest steel they can make and have them cut at one of the up-time machine shops.”
“That’s going to take time,” Hayley said. “I’m not all that sure how long Moses Abrabanel is going to continue to take our IOUs.”
“I’ll talk to Moses,” Karl said.
“I’ll write Heather,” Judy said, and the rest took their assignments.
* * *
Over the next weeks, the girls of the Barbie Consortium did what they did best. They shopped. They bought cloth, they bought jewels, they bought bread and cake and buttons and bows. They bought flour by the ton and coal and bronze. Every purchase was recorded and went into Sarah’s database, and a picture of what the Austro-Hungarian reichsthaler was worth began to emerge. People like to think that one currency translates into another in terms of a simple exchange rate, but it’s not really true, any more than one language translates perfectly into another. An exchange rate is an average and that average will be accurate enough for some products, but way off the mark for others. Like the German word Weltanschauung can be translated as “world view,” but that translation is not completely accurate. In terms of money, it depends on where you are and what you want to buy. What Sarah developed wasn’t so much an exchange rate for the reichsthaler versus the American dollar, but a picture of what the reichsthaler was good for.
It wasn’t a pretty picture.
Abrabanel Offices outside Vienna
“Hello, Moses.” Karl Eusebius von Liechtenstein smiled as he was ushered into Moses Abrabanel’s tiny office. Then the smile died as he saw the yellow circle on Moses’ doublet. Jews in Grantville were not required to wear special signs on their clothing, and with Morris Roth as a major noble of Bohemia, they weren’t required to wear them in Bohemia either, though many still did. But here in Austria-Hungary, it was still a legal requirement. Quite to his own surprise, Karl suddenly realized that he was offended by it. The news out of the USE was full of the CoC and Operation Krystalnacht. Much as he knew and understood the political motivation, he remembered Henry Dreeson’s body, and was for the most part in sympathy with the CoC and Mike Stearns on this.
At the moment, he could see concern blooming on Moses’ face and wondered what his looked like. “I’m sorry, Moses. I have been living in Grantville these last years, and, well, sometimes I forget that the rest of the world has not changed as much as we would hope. It was the yellow circle. No one wears such things in Grantville unless they choose to. And not every one that wears one is Jewish. They are all the rage among a certain faction of the CoCs recently.”
Moses didn’t look especially reassured by Karl’s comments. “I’ve been concerned that there might be a reaction to the CoC operations here.”
“You think that likely?” Karl asked. “It’s not Jews stringing up the anti-Semites in the USE.”
“That’s a distinction not commonly made in the midst of a pogrom.” Then the Jewish banker shook his head. “Never mind, Your Serene Highness. What can I do for you?”
“You have been loaning the Sanderlin-Fortney Investment Company money for the past several months, I understand?”
“Your Serene Highness, with all respect, our dealings with the SFIC are a private matter and it would be inappropriate for me to discuss them with you. You wouldn’t want us bandying about any dealings we might have with your family, would you?”
“No, and that’s fine. I got the information, including the numbers, from Hayley Fortney. I’m here with her knowledge and consent to buy the debt.”
“Why?” Moses blurted, then blushed all the way to his receding hairline.
“Because Hayley is approaching her credit limit, and her fellow Barbies are coming to the rescue. I’m the Ken Doll, I’ll have you know. And the Ken Doll is supposed to stand around looking good and giving the Barbies money. Judy says it’s a rule.”
Moses Abrabanel blinked and his mouth fell open. Karl found himself laughing out loud. “The Barbies are backing the SFIC, and the Liechtenstein family is backing the Barbies. SFIC’s credit may now be considered as good as any in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and better than most.”
Now Moses was giving Karl a very sharp look. “Why?” he said again. This time it wasn’t shock, but calculation.
“Because it’s a good investment,” Karl explained. “Yes, they are carrying people, but most of those people are hard-working and if some of them will fail to pay the SFIC back in full, most will. The SFIC can afford the loss of the occasional default or forgiven loan better than the loss of business.”
Moses nodded, slowly at first, but then with more vigor. “I see, and if I could I would extend them more credit. But with the loss of Bohemia and the rest, the empire has been leaning on its other sources of income with more force than might be entirely wise. To put it bluntly, Your Serene Highness, the Abrabanel family in Austria-Hungary is teetering on the edge.”
Karl pulled out a check book. It was printed down-time, but in the up-time style and it was on the First National Bank of Grantville. He then took a gold inlaid fountain pen, also down-time made to an up-time design, and used it to fill out a check with several zeros in the amount line. It somewhat more than cleared the debt owed to the Abrabanel Banking house by the SFIC.
“And the rest?” Moses asked.
“A drawing account.”
“I’ll implement it today, Your Serene Highness.” It would take about two weeks for the check to reach Grantville and clear, but apparently Moses didn’t doubt that it would be good.
Liechtenstein House, Vienna
“You did what?” Gundaker’s face was as red as Moses’ had been, but it wasn’t from embarrassment. It was from anger.
“I bought twenty percent of the Sanderlin-Fortney Investment Company,” Karl repeated.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“I find myself wondering the same thing,” Maximillian said, rather more cautiously.
“No, Uncles. My mind is right where it ought to be. However, there is a real difference between a loan to one individual and the same amount loaned to many people. It is less the level of risk than the measurability of risk. Some of the debts will not be paid, some will be, with interest. This will average out to either a slight gain, or at worst a slight loss on the loans. If it turns out to be a loss, the interest in the many businesses will cover the loss over time. It’s actually much safer than say investing in armies. After all, armies sometimes lose the war.”