The Mech Touch novel Chapter 7075

Chapter 7075: The First Barter

Coordinating the trades was a bit troublesome.

Since Ves was no longer the patriarch of the clan, his current status in the clan was that of a mech designer who operated beyond Gloriana’s authority.

That turned him into a free agent inside the clan, but also separated him from the hierarchy and its many levers.

In practice, that meant that Ves had to ask Casella for permission if he wanted to borrow key personnel, retrieve a valuable resource from the strategic vaults or draw upon a huge amount of clan funds.

The good news was that Ves did not have to turn to the clan for everything. He had amassed a huge personal fortune.

The problem was that money alone was not enough to exchange the rare and precious goods on offer.

For the first time in centuries, the MTA credit and the CFA credit had become subject to inflation.

It couldn’t be helped. The RA and the RF no longer maintained absolute dominion over human space anymore. They could no longer extract tribute from the Terran Alliance and the Rubarthan Pact.

Their spending continually increased. They exceeded every deficit limit that they previously imposed on themselves and went deeper into debt to produce more war materiel and train more soldiers for the wars raging across the borders of human-occupied space.

The Red Two also pressured their researchers and developers to innovate and develop new wonder weapons to use against the native aliens and the mutated voribugs.

All of that cost a lot of funding as well. Many R&D institutions had turned into black holes where money kept disappearing without producing anything of substance in the short term. Whether that might change in a few years was anyone’s guess.

Increased spending and decreasing revenue were not the only reasons why the top human currencies fell from their thrones and began to roll around in the dirt that they previously tried to avoid.

People simply lost confidence in the value of the MTA credit and CFA credit.

This was an understandable reaction. During times of crisis, stacking lots of money in a bank account was one of the least useful ways to protect oneself.

This was just hoarding wealth without converting it into anything concrete and useful enough to win the necessary battle and ensure one’s own survival.

This was also why the Red Two spent so much even if they knew that they were contributing to the hollowing out of their own precious currencies.

Compared to maintaining the value and confidence of the MTA credit and the CFA credit, the mechers and fleeters would much rather obtain more mechs and warships to defend their borders and squash any alien invaders that attempted to chip away at the Red Ocean Union!

There were many ways they could come back from a debt crisis and a hyperinflationary spiral if it came to that. What they could not recover from was to see all of their territories devoured by the aliens and their armed forces shattered beyond recovery.

In short, during a time of war, it was better to have lots of mechs and warships on hand rather than piles of unused cash.

While few people would argue that the mechers and the fleeters made the wrong decision, the reality of the situation was that a lot of other people effectively paid for their profligacy.

Inflation of the more unusual and unexpected variety was a tax on everyone else who possessed and depended on cash. They might still earn the same amount of money in terms of numbers, but when their value had dropped by 30 percent, then the Red Two effectively robbed them of all of that wealth and used it for their own purposes!

The only reason why few people objected to this behavior was because it was for a good cause.

The Red Two ultimately spent their money wisely and did everything in their power to defend the core territories that maintained their allegiance to the old order.

That did not mean that everyone was happy that they were being exploited by the current economic reality.

Suffice to say, the people and organizations that suffered the most from this hidden tax or more nefariously a form of legalized theft were those that possessed a huge cash reserve!

Ves and to a lesser extent the Larkinson Clan fell into this category.

It sucked because Ves was rapidly seeing his real wealth diminish by the day. His reluctance in spending his money on real estate and colonization may have saved him from concerns about the native aliens razing his expensive efforts into dust, but it also left him bereft of more value-retaining resources.

Hard currencies such as phasewater, strategic resources, mechs and warships mattered a lot more these days.

The biggest players increasingly eschewed cash as an exchange medium and resorted more and more on barter to obtain what they needed the most.

It was a primitive and inefficient means of exchange, but this was the best that they could do under the circumstances.

Ves had no choice but to play by the rules of the game.

That became very clear when Ves entered a luxury hotel and entered a small and elegant conference room in order to meet with the seller of the damaged imperial banner.

The Rubarthans had already half-taken over the hotel. They replaced all of the security personnel with their own troops and they had even found a way to station their mechs at the perimeter.

Naturally, the mechs of the Bluejay Fleet arrived as well and constantly kept an eye on their Rubarthan counterparts.

Ves arrived in his most formal outfit which was the one he wore during the transfer of power to the new matriarch.

Lucky accompanied him as well. The gem cat would rather spend time with the kids, but Ves needed his pet in order to help him examine the imperial banner and verify its material composition.

"Meow."

In order to fund all of these procurements, the Major General brought plenty of stuff that the Rubarthans had stashed in their vaults and museums for a long time. The imperial banner was just one of many trade goods that they sought to use as barter. _{fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com}