"That's why you merged the state bank and the citizens offices. You want people to get an identity card, so we lure them with 500 S-Mark?"

"I would have liked to make it a legal requirement, but then there would have been another outcry and only half would have complied. I have to get everyone to get an identity card voluntarily, so I say I'll offer you an account so that you don't have to be with the evil private banks, so that I can give you 500 S-Mark every year and give you this cool metal card with a glitter effect that replaces almost all your official identification documents, cards and numbers. The identity card is not a useless object for the citizen and he will always carry it with him because he can use it for every payment, every government office, every doctor's visit and in so many other places. Over the next few years, I will also make many public services free or discounted exclusively for citizens. If you then want to prove that you are a citizen, you will of course need your identity card, otherwise you will have to pay. In the future, every citizen will be given an account with the State Bank at birth and will then be issued with a citizenship card when they come of age. You will not have to use the account, but even if you don't, you will still have your identity card with you because it is simply too useful. Everyone will get used to it and then I will make it compulsory and nobody will care because it won't make any difference at all. Secondary objectives are also to gain a better overview and control over finances and money movements within the country, to simplify bureaucracy, for example in inter-agency procedures, applications, tax returns, and also to replace private banks and foreign currencies, but also for the citizens to develop a stronger sense of national identity. I would like the national holiday to become more important for everyone again. If everyone receives a gift of money on a certain day, it has the advantage that companies will know exactly when they can make a profit. They will hang out the national flags on their own, along with advertising banners and percentages."

"I understand the goals, but isn't 500 S-Mark too much?"

"That's a closet, and not even a good one. I think we can afford that."

"Do you want to create the money?"

"We don't need to. We have a massive surplus."

"Again?"

"You don't know how inflation works either, do you?

"Money loses purchasing power. You become poorer."

"Yes, money loses purchasing power. If you have money, you spend it, because it will lose value. You buy what you can buy. Demand is higher than supply. Prices continue to rise. Inflation continues to rise. Everyone gets poorer... Everyone?" Marah shook her head. "No. Inflation is a power struggle."

"What do you mean?"

"Suppose wealth is a cake and the economy is the baker. The money in circulation determines how much the baker gets. If it's too little, it will be a small cake. If there is enough, the cake will be as big as possible. If there is too much, the baker still takes it all and simply cuts the cake into smaller pieces. The value of the money determines the number of pieces. If the purchasing power of the money decreases, there will be more pieces, but the cake will not get smaller. This means that if you get less cake, someone else gets more cake. Prices rise by 2%. Real wages fall by 2%. The employer has the 2%. The employer has raised his prices. The employer gets more cake. Not everyone can lose. An exception, of course, would be if the value of money changes so quickly that the economy can no longer keep up."

"We have raised prices and made goods artificially scarce so that we..."

"The winners are all those who had net debt, who have a low income, the lower class, the absolute majority of society. The losers are the private banks, the private sector, the middle class, the upper class, the nobility. It's everyone who didn't trust me. The distribution of wealth has improved and I didn't even needed a tax. Everyone participated voluntarily. The state companies were also finally able to get rid of all those useless properties. We are winners."

Marah nodded affirmatively. Reyji not... Her salary had barely increased in that time. She was not a winner. The state was the winner.

"I heard someone say recently that inflation was the state's desired expropriation of its citizens."

"In this case, I guess it's true..."

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"The reasoning was actually that the free banks have 2% inflation as a target."

"The 2% is only because they can't do much about deflation and you also can't measure it properly."

"But I still wondered whether it's not unfair that the citizens who have earned a right to wealth lose it over time?"

"The cake is spoiled. The knife is rusty. The store is falling apart. You can't secure your right to wealth, because you can't preserve wealth. Those who do not participate in the preservation of wealth deserve to see their right to wealth dwindle. Money is an instrument for exchange. Create eternal wealth and you will no longer need money. Don't complain to society that it can't maintain your right to wealth for you, because all the wealth you and your ancestors have created for society doesn't last either. We are a rich society and our wealth continues to grow, so we still pay the parasites who don't participate, but a right to it, that doesn't exist. They have a right to a minimum standard of living, just like everyone else who doesn't work."

"I understand, Ms. Von Rosenberg."

"By the way, there's another reason for the surplus. I was informed last night that the World Healers Association has bought one of its breeding plants from Rotkäppchen. In exchange for the full license, they're paying a rounded 300 billion S-Mark plus a high percentage of all profits in the first year."

"That much? Why so much?"

"This is a specific medicinal plant. It can be used to make strong painkillers in the form of pills or as a weakened solution. After taking a pill with 300mg of the active ingredient, you no longer feel any pain or tiredness for the next 6 hours and at the same time endorphins are released with every physical touch. The stronger the nerve signals, the stronger the effect. The implications are as you think. That's why it's called the herb of happiness."

"Would it make sense to use it on soldiers?"

"Not really. The balance between intoxicant and painkiller is not right. If a bullet wound no longer hurts, they'd be rolling on the ground drooling."

"So only as a painkiller. Why did Rotkäppchen sell the license? Normally they distribute everything themselves."

"Yes, but in this particular case I decided against it together with the management and the researchers. It could be that the application could significantly worsen some diseases and the side effects are not foreseeable. It's better if we have as little to do with it as possible. The plant will still cause major problems for the world. If it were up to me, everything would have been destroyed, but we had also only bought the license. It's unlikely that we got all the plants with it."

"If that's the case, why did they buy it?"

"Rotkäppchen was only able to detect the aggravating effects in 22 people out of a test group of 100. The World Healers' Association strongly doubted the results of the study at the time, because they all died in the end. The people all had fatal diseases. It would not be conclusive that some people died faster than usual because the test group was too small overall. You ask me why they bought this dubious plant so expensively before it was properly tested? Well, they didn't explain it, but if you know enough, you quickly figure it out. That stuff grows almost by itself. It takes effect within minutes. It's extremely addictive. The list of side effects is short so far. According to the grower, it's a drug as harmless as weed, but much stronger and more interesting in its effects."

"So they want to sell untested drugs?"

"Not them themselves. You don't seem to know the structures? The World Healer Association is an organization for testing medicines, medical studies and things like that. If you want to get approval for a medicine from the member states, then you submit it to them and if you've been nice, they'll put their stamp of approval on it, which gives you approval as long as there are no national objections. Now, the World Healer Association is not entirely financed by its member states, but also from the donations of various national subsidiary organizations. Let me cut a long story short. They will test it with their arms and look away with their eyes and say with their mouths that they couldn't see anything unusual. So they'll test it, but as long as there are no obvious side effects, they'll allow it. Everything else is done by a pseudo-company. According to the treaty, we are not allowed to officially ban it as long as no one can independently prove serious side effects. I will still ban the cultivation and import under pretext. We will not stop it. It's far too easy to grow. But I want the rest of the world to have tested it by the time it gets here. It will be worse than any drug you can imagine. The only hope is that the side effects won't be too bad and it will displace other hard drugs."

.../

The next day, there was an article about the speech in many of the daily newspapers. Many of them featured the same picture from the end of the speech, where Marah was still standing on stage and the audience was cheering. However, the newspaper 'Roseleaf' chose a slightly different approach. The picture was the same, but above Marah it said: 'Pea stew from Ebensbach!'. Nothing else. It did not even say the price. It looked like people were only cheering for pea stew. When Reyji later showed the paper to Marah, she went straight on. "God, I hate this fucking newspaper," she cursed. She had every reason to curse. Contrary to her expectations, Ebensbach's pea stew was constantly sold out in all the stores for the next few weeks. It took until after the national holiday before any remained on the shelves. She was also teased for it at every opportunity. But perhaps this was mainly because it worked on her.

When Reyji went to the newsstand on Palace Square to get a coffee, one particular magazine caught her eye.

'The Lie of the Banks' was written on the glossy cover.

"What do I care about my drivel from yesterday..."

Reyji rather drank her coffee.

The market share of the magazine 'THE ECONOMY' had fallen to 8%.

.../ End Part