The Ghost Festival had barely passed when officials began submitting memorials one after another, recounting how hard it was for common people to borrow money and how bitter poverty could be. They begged the Imperial Court to expand lending and help people in desperate need.
But where was the Imperial Court supposed to find that much money?
The Imperial Court had weathered several major upheavals last year. Even a large part of the Divine Capital had been blown apart, and there had been a disaster unseen in a century... If commercial tax revenue had not risen at year's end and given the Imperial Court room to breathe, it might have had to cut spending across the board this year.
Maintaining the previous lending limit already meant squeezing money out from between its teeth!
The Imperial Court had no money. What could it do?
Someone suggested allowing wealthy households in each region to establish poverty-relief loan programs, similar to the Great Xia Bank's loans, but subject to strict oversight.
Yet what exactly would "strict oversight" entail? The assembled officials could not agree on an answer.
A few days later, Zhang Hao, a companion reader to the Crown Prince, submitted a memorial with two proposals.
First: the interest charged by poverty-relief lenders established by wealthy households could not exceed that of the Great Xia Bank. This was, after all, meant to benefit the people. Anyone unwilling to do it could simply decline; no one was forcing them to lend.
Second: merchants could administer the loans, but only the Imperial Court could handle debt collection. None of them were ignorant children. They all knew how brutal private debt collectors could be.
Di Renchen had been frowning over the matter for days. The moment he read these proposals, he was delighted. He summoned Zhang