Ever since the French abandoned the gold standard, the franc had plummeted all the way down. At its peak, the franc had been worth about the same as the lev; now, it had fallen to ten to one.
As it plunged relentlessly, the French government plundered vast amounts of wealth from the public and escaped its fiscal crisis. Large quantities of cash were released into the market, and the domestic economy began to recover as well.
In the first half of 1923, France's total exports rose by 38 percent over the same period in 1922, nearly catching up to the peak level of the same period in 1913.
Amid this favorable climate, France's unemployment rate also began to drop sharply. The price was a corresponding decline in the living standards of the French people.
The advantages and disadvantages of abandoning the gold standard were laid bare before them, and Ferdinand was considering whether Bulgaria should follow suit. Given Bulgaria's current economy, it was still far from the point where it could no longer defend the lev's value.
At worst, exports would shrink severely. But Bulgaria's total export trade did not account for a large proportion, and its tariff revenue made up only 4.8 percent of fiscal income, while export-related revenue accounted for even less.
The main reason was that Bulgaria-Russia trade, which accounted for nearly half of all imports and exports, was subject to merely symbolic tariffs on both sides. This meant forgoing a large amount of tariff revenue, but it also brought in other taxes. Overall, they were still making a profit.
After all, once tariffs were levied on exported goods, many domestic taxes had to be exempted, such as stamp duty, value-added tax, business tax...
If all those taxes were collected as well, businesses might as well stop