Evening
Downing Street in London was ablaze with lights. The MacDonald Cabinet was holding an emergency meeting. As the government of the strongest nation in the World War, there were not many matters capable of making them so tense.
Yet what had happened now was precisely one of them—the pound had depreciated sharply!
Everyone had been mentally prepared for the pound's depreciation. Ever since abandoning the gold standard, the government had printed an additional batch of currency, resolving the fiscal crisis.
The problem was that the pound was now depreciating far too quickly. According to the plan, they had intended for it to depreciate by fifteen percent over three years. Yet in less than a year, it had already fallen by nearly thirty percent.
This was outrageous. Someone had to be shorting the pound! Yet what astonished them was that Bulgaria and France, the main forces shorting the pound, had not even gone all out. In fact, none of the world's financial conglomerates had fully moved to attack the pound!
With their current methods, the pound could not possibly have depreciated this fast. That was the crux of the matter.
"Prime Minister, a large quantity of counterfeit notes has recently appeared on the market. Their imitation is extremely convincing; anyone but a professional would be unable to tell them apart.
"The Treasury believes these counterfeit notes may have accelerated the pound's depreciation!" Chancellor of the Exchequer Pitt said with a frown.
"When did the counterfeit notes appear? And who is producing them behind the scenes?" MacDonald asked with concern.
"Less than a month after we announced the abandonment of the gold standard, large quantities of counterfeit notes began appearing on the market.
"Because they were so convincing, we failed to notice them at first. The counterfeit notes brazenly made their