Vienna, Hofburg Palace.
Fanny von Arnstein, the Austrian Empire's beautiful economist and one of Franz's economic advisers, was somewhat excited—and somewhat uneasy.
Truthfully, she did not know whether she ought to be pleased or worried.
To be honest, Fanny von Arnstein very much wanted to know what expression Franz would wear when he learned that the Austrian Empire's economic growth had slowed. This was the first time since 1836 that the Austrian Empire's economic growth rate had fallen below 10%.
Yet to other nations, this was simply an inconceivable figure. Moreover, because the Austrian Empire used a different reference model, other countries simply refused to recognize Austrian economic data.
Since the growth figures were so exaggerated, economists from every country kept producing hard evidence that the Austrian Empire's economic data had been falsified.
After all, aside from fraud, there was simply no way to explain the Austrian Empire's economic figures. And since the data published by countries at the time was already a mixture of truth and falsehood—for instance, Britain had long run severe deficits, yet after suffering several crushing defeats, its deficit had actually shrunk considerably—
such economic data was good enough to watch for amusement; there was no need to take it too seriously.
In truth, the chain reactions triggered by Franz's arrival had expanded the world economy considerably beyond its historical scale. Many countries had seen their trade volumes multiply, while their economic growth far exceeded that of the same period in history.
But France and Prussia only managed annual economic growth of around 5% to 6%, far removed from the figures publicly announced by the Austrian Empire.
Britain and the United States averaged only 2% to 3% annual growth, mainly because negative growth in certain fiscal years dragged down their averages.
In fact, the United States