Half a month passed, and the Ten-Year Plan finally won congressional approval. Ferdinand's good mood did not last long before the Ministry of Finance submitted a report on the world economy.
More precisely, it was a report on the European economy. With the United States split apart, the world economy now largely depended on continental Europe.
The aftereffects of the World War had finally begun to show. The cause of Europe's economic decline was not, as later generations claimed, that the war had cost countries massive populations, creating a labor shortage and triggering an economic crisis.
In reality, unemployment was soaring among both the British and French. One could only say that cheap industrial goods were not quite as useful as they seemed.
Under the impact of German industrial and commercial products, many British and French processing and manufacturing enterprises had been forced to close. The Ministry of Finance estimated that Britain's unemployed population would increase by one million in 1921!
The French would fare even worse. Their unemployment was rising faster than Britain's, increasing by at least 1.3 million!
The consequences of so many unemployed people were undoubtedly grave. Under normal circumstances, governments ought to take measures to curb the economic crisis.
Unfortunately, a great deal of German and Italian debt had now been transferred into the hands of financial conglomerates. They could hardly abandon profits already in hand for the sake of national interests.
The British and French governments could only seek other ways to resolve the crisis. The French, for instance, intended to expel the Italians and Germans within their borders. At the Paris Peace Conference, they had acquired portions of German and Italian territory, where seven or eight million non-French people still lived.
Of course, this was only an idea for now. The French government still