Since the vast majority of the invited countries were on the silver standard, Prince Schwarzenberg made a suggestion.
"Your Majesty, if you want this matter settled before the conference, it would be best to adopt a bimetallic gold-and-silver standard.
That would minimize resistance."
"Prime Minister, do you know how great a loss that would inflict on our country?"
Prince Schwarzenberg immediately pulled a thick stack of encrypted documents from his briefcase.
"Your Majesty, I've already asked the Ministry of Finance and our experts to conduct a professional assessment.
If we implement a bimetallic standard, our country can expect to incur an additional five to fifteen million florins in related expenses each year. The total losses from arbitrage, wear and tear, and other factors over that period would come to around fifty million florins."
Annual losses of sixty million florins would be an astronomical sum for most countries in the world at the time, but Prince Schwarzenberg showed not the slightest trace of concern.
"Although we will suffer some losses, according to the Ministry of Finance's estimates, the Monetary Union will significantly reduce the barriers to our goods entering other countries.
Given our current advantage in the market, it will add billions of florins to our trade volume in the future. It won't be difficult to make up for the losses.
At the same time, our influence over Europe's economy will extend into the political sphere. Austria's influence over European affairs will grow considerably in the future, and that is far more important than increasing government revenue."
Prince Schwarzenberg paused, then spoke with excitement.
"Our country still has large quantities of silver brought back from Japan and Mexico, as well as gold brought back from Africa and California.
According to our economists, in theory, we could manipulate exchange rates within the