Meetings are a waste of time, most of time. A rare exception played out in 1922, at the Greek Prime Minister’s office.
After discussing his fruitless efforts to secure funding from European governments, the PM dismissed his confidantes to remain alone with the Economy minister. Taxation or tariffs were out of the question, as the needs were pressing and urgent. Suddenly, the minister stands up. “Jamie, I got this” (I am paraphrasing a bit). He proceeded with explaining his cunning plan with a sketch, which he replayed a month later, in front of the Parliament. Using a pair of scissors, he cut a 100 Drachmae banknote in half. This, he said, holding the first half (which bore the picture of Georgios Stavros, the founder of the central bank), is money, now worth 50 Drachmae. The other half (which depicted the royal crown) is now a bond, a loan to the State, also of 50 Drachmae. A pandemonium of booing, laughter and clapping erupted.
Thus, by law, the long hand of the government converted private cash holdings to “Stavrous”1 and “crowns”, as they came to be named by everyday people. The “crowns” yielded a high interest rate, and foreign citizens and companies were shielded from the ministerial magic. The public did not go ballistic, as maybe we would expect. The country had been at war with Turkey since 1919, following WW I and the Balkan Wars before that. Emergency and instability were casually looming around the corner. The (bribed) press could be trusted to massage the message. Greek sources2 note that personalities like the renowned scholar Vilfredo Pareto and the British Prime Minister Lloyd George praised this fiscal innovation.
To be fair, the law itself was a bit too much to the guerilla side, but it was hardly the only one in town at the time. The territories that succeeded the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1919 established new currencies, but had to also deal with the old Austro-Hungarian Crown banknotes the people held. So, the old banknotes had to be stamped with the respective national seal to remain valid. In at least two cases (the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and the Czechoslovakian state), stamping went with a mandatory levy on the amount, to be invested in government bonds.
The plan boosted state coffers for few months, until the war ended in tears and a military Revolutionary Committee set a new government. A hastily assembled special court-martial charged 6 top-tier officials – among them the two men we followed in this piece – with treason and convicted them to execution by firing squad. Foreign governments were not fucking amused as legal procedures had gone out of the window, but the shooting was still carried out. 10 years later, the leader of the opposing fraction recognized the Economy minister’s cut as a “manly act” in contrast with the easy way of just printing money, that averted the collapse of the currency but also entangled him in the country’s grim tidings.
The trial remained controversial, with shades of scapegoating and political revanchism weighting on its legacy. The Supreme Civilian and Criminal Court of Greece declared it void in the autumn of 2010.
A form of plural for the name “Stavros”, in Greek.
My kind of justice.