How I Built a Bank in South America (4)
A month before Tortilla Bank opened its doors, a state of emergency swept through the entire civil service of San Marcos.
The Presidential Palace had issued a directive as sharp and cold as a drawn blade: every last official, without a single exception, was to bring in deposits.
"Throw everything you've got into the campaign. Relatives, acquaintances—I don't care who. Get them to put their money in the bank!"
"Miss your quota and you'll be growing corn at Tortilla Farm!"
"Get out there. Put up flyers, do whatever it takes. Work like your lives depend on it!"
Beneath the thunder of their superiors, civil servants ran until the soles of their feet caught fire.
"Sir, don't keep your money at home like that. Entrust it to the bank from now on. They'll pay you interest, you know?"
The response was ice-cold.
"Interest? What the hell is that?"
"It's your money having babies. You put in a hundred dollars, and a year later they give you back a hundred and five!"
"Bullshit! Nothing's free in this world. You're just trying to steal my money, aren't you?"
To the people of San Marcos, who had lived their entire lives in poverty, interest was a concept that simply did not exist. A bank was nothing more than a strange and suspicious creature.
They plastered flyers, held neighborhood meetings, and chanted slogans about how saving was the only way to survive—but the results were negligible.
"Honey, they're saying a bank is opening. They'll keep our money safe, apparently."
"Don't even think about it. What if we hand it over and they just tell us to get lost?"
"Yeah... you'd have to actually trust them first..."
In the end, they succeeded in making the public aware that a bank existed—only to harvest nothing but suspicion in return.
Just as the civil servants were sinking into despair, something happened that flipped the atmosphere in an instant.
Nine o'clock on the morning Tortilla Bank opened for business.
Having heard that public sentiment toward the bank was sour, Eugene delivered an emergency address to the nation.
Once the picture locked in and the anthem faded, the Eugene who appeared on screen was not the man the country was used to seeing. The self-assured presence was gone. In its place sat a hollow-eyed, haggard face, as if he had not slept in days.
"My beloved people of San Marcos."
"I stand before you today with a heart that is both devastated and desperate."
From the very first word, the people's hearts plummeted.
"Several months ago, America's great financial powers came to me. They offered to lend us money. Vast sums, they said—enough to build our highways and run our factories. But the price was cruel. They demanded our land. And they demanded extraterritorial rights."
Eugene bit his lip and pressed on.
"I refused. No matter how desperate our need for money, the moment we accepted theirs, San Marcos would inevitably fall once more into becoming an economic colony of a great power."
At the word colony, the eyes of everyone sitting in front of a television wavered.
"I would rather starve to death than accept such an offer again—and if it comes again, I will refuse it still!"
His voice had turned fierce.
"But my people—reality is merciless. We have no capital. Just as blood must circulate for a person to live, money must circulate for an economy... for a nation to survive. Right now, our veins are empty and withering. If this continues, the factories we built with our blood and sweat may grind to a halt, and construction on our highways may stop altogether."
The same Eugene who had been lying with a perfectly straight face stared straight through the camera—and bowed his head.
The people could only sit in astonishment. They had never imagined that their iron-blooded leader would bow his head.
"We need the money you hold. Left unused, it is nothing but scraps of paper. But the moment it comes to the bank, it becomes the bullets that defend San Marcos, and the bread that will light our children's future."
"I, Eugene Choi, stake my life on this promise. Not a single dollar of the blood-earned money you entrust to us will be spent in vain. When this nation grows strong, I will return to you more than you have given."
And so came the final movement of the speech.
"And for those of you who make the decision to save this country, I have prepared a small token of gratitude."
Eugene drew from his breast something that flashed like a card of solid gold, and held it up for the camera.
A gold commemorative card
Bestowed upon those who stood with the nation in its darkest hour
The luminous card filled the entire screen in close-up.
"A Certificate of Merit."
"I want to remember. Who the true patriots are. Who stood up with a torch in San Marcos's darkest night. History will record those who hold this medal as the citizens who sacrificed for their country."
Eugene bowed his head once more, deeply.
The broadcast ended. A brief, ringing silence. And then the whole of San Marcos turned upside down.
"Did you hear? The country's about to collapse!"
"The Americans are trying to make us slaves again!"
"His Excellency wept... that unbreakable man actually wept!"
Grief and fury boiled over—and in the middle of it, a few sharp-eyed citizens began to shout as if they were screaming.
"Th-this is no time to just stand here! Didn't you hear the end? He said he'd remember the true patriots!"
"So what?"
"It means anyone who gets a Certificate of Merit becomes a first-class citizen, and anyone who doesn't is a traitor who hid their money while the country burned! Think about it! You think they'll even treat people without a certificate like human beings? Second-class citizens... no, they might treat us like non-citizens!"
"Hah—! Y-you're right!"
Faces went ashen. Given everything Eugene had done so far, it was more than plausible.
The same way you weren't treated as a person without a national ID, a new terror took hold: without a Certificate of Merit, you might be reduced to a second-class citizen.
"Th-then if we want to send our kids to school, go to the hospital...?"
"Obviously they'll take care of the people with certificates first, right? You know what kind of man His Excellency is!"
In that instant, the people who had understood ran home with a single purpose burning in their heads.
I HAVE TO BECOME A FIRST-CLASS CITIZEN.
The moment they reached home, they took every last dollar they had except what they needed to live, and they headed for the bank.
And that was how the reverse bank run began.
"Hey—hey! No cutting in line!"
The staff shouted themselves hoarse, but the words never reached ears already drowned in fear and patriotism.
The lobby reeked of sweat, earth, and the peculiar mildew of old banknotes. The tellers' fingers had already gone numb. When the counting machines overheated and died, they licked their fingers and counted wad after wad by hand.
From one-dollar bills to grease-stained hundreds, every last dollar in San Marcos was pouring into that building like a tide.
"There's no more room in the vaults!"
"Just cram it in! Shove it in however you can!"
"We're out of passbooks!"
"Write it out by hand on paper if you have to! Make copies, hold onto them, and swap them for real passbooks later!"
"But if someone embezzles..."
"This is the bank His Excellency built! Who would dare embezzle from it?!"
The bank lobby was descending into utter pandemonium.
Ten days after Tortilla Bank opened for business.
"Is this... even possible?"
I stared at the number on the settlement report and could not close my mouth.
Deposits Received
$3,012,000,000 USD
Three billion dollars. In Korean won, more than four trillion—an enormous sum, gathered in a mere ten days.
When I had first planned the bank, the target had been a billion dollars at most. More than three times that amount had come flooding in.
"San Marcos had this much money sitting around?"
Isabella poured tea with complete composure and answered my question as if she were commenting on the weather.
"It is entirely plausible, sir. The people simply did not trust banks, so they stacked their dollars at home. If one assumes they have brought in every last cent saved over a lifetime, the figure is not particularly surprising."
"Ah..."
Now that she put it that way, it made sense. Three billion dollars worked out to only about three hundred dollars per person, and if you thought of it as a lifetime of farming and trading, it was not an impossible amount.
Still...
"Our people are better savers than I expected."
In a country full of people who earned a day's wage and ate it the same night, this was, without question, a considerable level of thrift.
Back in college, the guy in the boarding room next to mine—Mr. Kim—was a full-time investor sitting on over a million dollars in assets, and he still lived in a tank top eating nothing but instant ramen.
I nodded, remembering the mentor who had taught me the market.
I was turning the pages of the report in a pleasant haze when Isabella spoke again.
"On another note, President Benjamin has contacted us requesting that we set the operating guidelines."
"Operating guidelines? Why would he need..."
"San Marcos has no banking laws, sir."
"Ah... right."
In an ordinary country, commercial law or a banking act would already spell out reserve requirements, lending restrictions, and the rest. But San Marcos had never had anything except a state bank that functioned as a vault for the national treasury, so a banking law had never existed.
"If you set the basic guidelines, he should be able to handle the rest on his own."
"Shall we, then?"
Isabella took out her notebook and rapidly wrote down what I dictated.
"First, let's set the reserve requirement at ten percent. If we make it too tight, the money won't circulate."
"Yes, sir."
"Deposit interest starts at five percent, but for long-term savings that lock the money up, we'll go as high as ten. They trusted the nation with their money, so the return should be substantial."
"Understood."
"And the most important part—lending..."
Right now the bank was overflowing with cash. If that money sat rotting in the vaults, the interest burden would sink the bank, which meant we had to pump it into the market as fast as possible, and in as great a volume as possible.
"For start-up loans and livelihood loans, tell him not to be too strict with the screening criteria."
"Not too strict, meaning...?"
"Even if the business plan is a bit shaky and there's no collateral, if the purpose is something they can actually carry out—buying a truck, buying machinery, that sort of thing—lend the money. However, we must thoroughly monitor whether the loan is being spent on nightlife or gambling."
Isabella looked at me with a trace of concern.
"But Your Excellency, if we lend without collateral and they default, it could deteriorate the bank's financial health."
A reasonable worry. I smiled, unhurried.
"You see, I believe in our people."
"......"
"Think about it. These are citizens who entrusted the money they so painstakingly saved, even in hardship, to the bank. If we can't trust people like that, whom can we trust?"
I spoke with complete conviction.
"Even if a genuine streak of misfortune means they can't repay, they'll work to pay it off. I'm certain of it."
And in that instant, Isabella's eyes went wide.
"Ah... I see."
She clapped her palm as if she had just received a revelation.
"Now that I think of it, we have Tortilla Farm."
"...What?"
"We had collateral far more reliable than land or a house. There is no collateral more precious than one's own body, after all."
She nodded, genuinely impressed.
"And the wages there are relatively high, so they can pay off their debts quickly and make a fresh start. Two birds with one stone. As expected of Your Excellency. You already had the perfect system in place."
"No, that's not what I meant... I was saying people are diligent, so they'd pay it back on their own..."
"I shall inform President Benjamin. We will have him insert a provision for hard labor at Tortilla Farm in the event of delinquency into the loan agreements."
"......"
Isabella is terrifying...