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I'm a High Fantasy Tax Collector, So What? A CKII Tax Collector Quest

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Oshha said:
So why does the Intrigue go down then?
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...because she's all hopped up on goddess-channeling, and not paying attention to the little things? Things like Glowing With Divine Power are not so hot for, say, sneaking into the offices of prominent merchants late at night.

I admit, I hadn't realized she got worse, but it does make a degree of sense.

Might be better to think of Ophelia/Oskaria as Ophelia with a massive semi-temporary blessing/buff on her that Oskaria has custom-made for the purpose, rather than Ophelia who can actually access Oskaria's capabilities directly.
 
[X] Go. (Will cost 1 Month, will answer the request of the Minister of the Interior, ???)

The bureaucrats must stick together, especially in this hellhole.

The thin grey line is all we have. And the dream of Gosplan over the nobles
 
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Oshha said:
I would have figured the spirit of a place where you can't take a step without tripping over a plot or two and corruption is everywhere you look would be at least decent at Intrigue.
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I would have thought that a national spirit would be somewhat prone to patriotism, which tends to be a bit less thoughtful and a bit more "we are right because we are the best!" in its thinking. Basically, it would to a significant extent be what people think of the country rather than its actual state, because people act on their beliefs and thus the general society operates with a pretty solid veneer of civility under which the politics can hide.

Also it is the avatar rather than the spirit, and being an avatar is difficult to hide. Being a giant telepathic spider is also difficult to hide, but it is also far easier to misrepresent, and carries fewer consequences for acting outside of its domain. I imagine that it would not be healthy for The Spirit of Oskaria to deliberately commit treason, Justice to harbour criminals, house spirits to enjoy a spot of arson, or Order to engage in drunken revelry.
 
So we're going to have to come up with a plan for dealing with the ticking time bomb that is the Antiguan Holdings Company. With it having a massively overinflated share price, it's only a matter of time before someone realizes that the fundamentals of the company aren't sound. Now, with us having the largest part of the shares this isn't as much of a problem as it otherwise might be, especially as we didn't put any of our own money into it, and as such can simply eat the loss. But given these shares likely represent a significant chunk of the local nobility's stored wealth, if anyone realizes the problem and starts selling, then we cause another market crash. Now, probably not one as bad as we just had, given that the debt/share swaps ended up cancelling out a fair bit, but when it crashes they probably won't have a Stewardship 23 economic genius around to keep things from exploding, so it might end up actually being worse.

So we need to figure out what we actually plan to do with this company. Do we plan to slowly spin it down in a way that'll minimize the long-term damage? Do we plan to transition it into a legitimate financial institution of some sort? If so, how? But we have to do something with it, or sooner or later it'll blow up in our face.
 
Hydroplatypus said:
So we're going to have to come up with a plan for dealing with the ticking time bomb that is the Antiguan Holdings Company. With it having a massively overinflated share price, it's only a matter of time before someone realizes that the fundamentals of the company aren't sound. Now, with us having the largest part of the shares this isn't as much of a problem as it otherwise might be, especially as we didn't put any of our own money into it, and as such can simply eat the loss. But given these shares likely represent a significant chunk of the local nobility's stored wealth, if anyone realizes the problem and starts selling, then we cause another market crash. Now, probably not one as bad as we just had, given that the debt/share swaps ended up cancelling out a fair bit, but when it crashes they probably won't have a Stewardship 23 economic genius around to keep things from exploding, so it might end up actually being worse.

So we need to figure out what we actually plan to do with this company. Do we plan to slowly spin it down in a way that'll minimize the long-term damage? Do we plan to transition it into a legitimate financial institution of some sort? If so, how? But we have to do something with it, or sooner or later it'll blow up in our face.
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I think you're misunderstanding. By my read, the share price is wildly disproportionate for its nominal business because a lot of what it is is a debt holding company. The price is likely somewhat overinflated anyway (because the nobles are not so good at resisting financial chicanery) but I think it's not as bad as I think you think it is. Likewise, we've been doing a bunch of stock buyback along the way, which means that the noble investment isn't as severely high as you might think.

@huhYeahGoodPoint could we get a rough idea of how accurate that is?
- How much of the company do we personally currently own?
- How much of a big deal to the local nobility are the debts currently owned?
- How heavily invested in the company are the current nobility?
- How generally overinflated are the stock prices, given the assets held?
 
Oshha said:
So why does the Intrigue go down then?
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Intrigue goes down partially for reasons of "glowy woman hard to forget or miss" but also because of a subtle thing that laces the air when she speaks or does things that seems to indicate a higher power is doing things. When she is Ophelia-Oskaria, that feeling magnifies and specifically identifies her backer as a Spirit of Oskaria to all who hear her words and identify her deeds - which is kind of terrible for Intrigue.
Hydroplatypus said:
So we're going to have to come up with a plan for dealing with the ticking time bomb that is the Antiguan Holdings Company. With it having a massively overinflated share price, it's only a matter of time before someone realizes that the fundamentals of the company aren't sound. Now, with us having the largest part of the shares this isn't as much of a problem as it otherwise might be, especially as we didn't put any of our own money into it, and as such can simply eat the loss. But given these shares likely represent a significant chunk of the local nobility's stored wealth, if anyone realizes the problem and starts selling, then we cause another market crash. Now, probably not one as bad as we just had, given that the debt/share swaps ended up cancelling out a fair bit, but when it crashes they probably won't have a Stewardship 23 economic genius around to keep things from exploding, so it might end up actually being worse.

So we need to figure out what we actually plan to do with this company. Do we plan to slowly spin it down in a way that'll minimize the long-term damage? Do we plan to transition it into a legitimate financial institution of some sort? If so, how? But we have to do something with it, or sooner or later it'll blow up in our face.
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Sirrocco said:
I think you're misunderstanding. By my read, the share price is wildly disproportionate for its nominal business because a lot of what it is is a debt holding company. The price is likely somewhat overinflated anyway (because the nobles are not so good at resisting financial chicanery) but I think it's not as bad as I think you think it is. Likewise, we've been doing a bunch of stock buyback along the way, which means that the noble investment isn't as severely high as you might think.

@huhYeahGoodPoint could we get a rough idea of how accurate that is?
- How much of the company do we personally currently own?
- How much of a big deal to the local nobility are the debts currently owned?
- How heavily invested in the company are the current nobility?
- How generally overinflated are the stock prices, given the assets held?
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You own a good 50-65% of the company in stock, so you retain absolute ownership over what amounts to a debt-holding company - you absolutely forbade merchants and other regular people from buying into what ultimately was a noble scam, and you vastly preferred payment in paper debt rather than specie - so while some people who got in early decided to invest a trickle of their own specie when they couldn't quite figure out how much debt they were pouring in, over 99% of the stock's value is in debts which you promptly forgave as part of buying people's stock in the company back. As such, you have a bunch of shareholders who hold a lot of paper stock, and a bunch of nobles who still owe debts - but you've mostly made sure to insulate everyone else from the shock if/when this stock goes tits up. Provided, of course, that the nobles don't decide to all promptly dive back into believing they own the wealth of nations, again.

As a result of all your chicanery, however, most of the nobles are largely out of the company - you've made sure to get their debts in exchange for shares, with some early holdovers retaining too many shares to plausibly get rid of. Even still, however, stock prices are one to two orders of magnitude too high based on raw assets - but then again, it's not really coasting on raw assets so much as an intangible asset:

The value of your word.
 
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huhYeahGoodPoint said:
Provided, of course, that the nobles don't decide to all promptly dive back into believing they own the wealth of nations, again.
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I wouldn't rule that out, given that they already did it once, but at least it's collapse is less likely to result in an economic crisis... Though now I'm wondering if the nobles won't once again start trading shares around as a form of paper currency. Would be an ironic way to turn into an actual bank if they start treating Antiguan Holdings Company shares as bank notes.

The value of your word.
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While less of a problem than I thought, this is still a problem for us, as we need to keep our reputation clean regarding financial shenanigans. People in the know need to trust that we know what we're doing, and won't leave them holding the bag when it's all over and done. So we either need to stabilize the company, or wind it down in such a way that it doesn't harm our reputation (either by winding it down in a slow calm manner, or by ensuring someone else takes the blame).
 
Ideally we'd want to slowly deflate the value of the company to be valued properly. Unfortunately any attempt at this is near certain to cause a complete and total collapse of the stock price. This is problematic, but it might actually be for the best to get everyone we can out of the company and then intentionally pop it like an overinflated balloon. Limit the damage to a few families that will be ruined but otherwise contain the fallout, and prevent them from thinking they are impossibly rich again.

Unfortunately this would ruin the value of our word, so isn't a viable option unless we can foist all the blame for it off on someone else, which would be quite a task.

A more viable option is probably to just... not do anything more with it. Let the company slowly wind down as the debts it owns are slowly paid back. Give everyone that stayed in till the end a significant bonus. Done.
 
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So... what I'm hearing is that between half and a third of the stock is held by people who believe it to be worth 100 times more than it's actually worth... though it sounds like those were largely the "got in early, think they got an amazing deal" types, rather than "got in late, mortgaged the farm, going to financially collapse if/when they realize they're holding worthless paper".

I'd really prefer to not besmirch our good name, but I'm also drawing a bit of a blank on how to come out of this clean without leaving someone holding the bag, and it sounds like we really don't have the kind of assets necessary to be that someone.

/**********/

There's another way to look at this. I'm not sure that it's a healthy way, but it's absolutely a way.

We have a company. It has credibility. It has noble backers. It can be made into a tool. If we choose to wield it as a weapon, we can use it as a shell for further shenanigans, and some of those shenanigans could be quite profitable. Finally, endgame, we let one of our enemies stage a hostile takeover of the company, pull as much as we reasonably can out of its flaming corpse, and leave *them* holding the bag. Of course, for them to pull off a hostile takeover, the first thign they do is buy out the other investors that are not us.

Basically, if we can pretend that it's an financial asset rather than a reputation liability for long enough, we can actually make it into one.
 
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Sirrocco said:
We have a company. It has credibility. It has noble backers. It can be made into a tool. If we choose to wield it as a weapon, we can use it as a shell for further shenanigans, and some of those shenanigans could be quite profitable. Finally, endgame, we let one of our enemies stage a hostile takeover of the company, pull as much as we reasonably can out of its flaming corpse, and leave *them* holding the bag. Of course, for them to pull off a hostile takeover, the first thign they do is buy out the other investors that are not us.
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Ooh, good idea. We do keep running into enemies and one on our next case is sure to try that. Have the whole scheme collapse moments after they get the bag, and it looks like it was all their fault.
 
We don't really have a choice here, I feel. Rather, we do, but staying seems unlikely to be worth snubbing the Minister, at the very least.

[X] Go. (Will cost 1 Month, will answer the request of the Minister of the Interior, ???)
 
[We are busy weaving the nation's finances, so unless it is a major asset in our existing activities, managing Flaming Dumpster Holdings would likely consume more time and effort than we have. Short of taking a year off to establish it, I don't see us converting it into anything more than the sockpuppet that it currently is. Is their somebody we could dump it on? I could see us putting a deed to our shares into a paper bag, setting the bag on fire, leaving it on our boss' doorstep, and then running off. (I mean, sure, she seems nice enough, but it'd be funny... and not our problem anymore!) We could try one of our team, but that would lose us one of our team, and they all tend to focus on matters other than finance. We could try just hiring, but that would involve hiring some random that knows enough to bend the thing into a useful shape, which tends to overlap a lot with some random that is horrifically corrupt and will focus on making bank and bailing. It'd be amusing to sign it over to a collective formed from our network, essentially signing the nobles' finances to their staff...

But nothing especially practical comes to mind to turn it into an actual business.
 
huhYeahGoodPoint said:
who remains confused about how the nobility could be so vapid as to fall for the scheme.
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I'd hardly call it vapid. Even with a full understanding of the scheme, the amount of value Agueda is extracting is far less than the value they gain from the debt refinancing and being able to collect their feudal dues.

Especially considering Agueda had just gone to bat for them while channeling the entire Conclave on the issue of trying to find a reasonable solution to their debts.
 
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I still can't get over the part where we...



Are trying to beat beat a mini-sub-sovereign debt bubble with a South Seas style stock bubble.

And it's working, at least for now.

[X] Go. (Will cost 1 Month, will answer the request of the Minister of the Interior, ???)

Aunty Shi Ping said:
Oh no. We are going to have to watch after the literal manifestation of our nation to make sure that they don't get swindled by random salesmen and dump the national treasury on invisible clothes that seemed terribly important at the time...
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...Aunty, I only just now saw this comment, but...

You do realize that is baaasically already our day job, right? Not even a change of pace! The only difference is that we'll be facepalping in exasperation at the personified antics of our nation.

SECOND EDIT:

It's like.

If Oskaria Personified had a non-crap Intrigue score, we wouldn't be in this mess. No personified country not haplessly gullible would allow herself to be saddled with a Sejm, for starters.
 
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[X] Go. (Will cost 1 Month, will answer the request of the Minister of the Interior, ???)

There are many things that the Minister could be requesting of us, many bad and some good, but we have to see. Might as well go as our target family and their lawyers are going as well and the situation isn't currently on fire.

I think the Antiguan Holdings Company scheme should be okay as long as we don't engage in further economic chicanery in an unsustainable attempt to make more money and encourage the nobles to simply pay off the currently sustainable amounts of debt over the next ten years and not do anything foolish with it. Even the greatest financial genius can't inflate and sustain an economic bubble forever so let us not try to do so.
 
[X] Go. (Will cost 1 Month, will answer the request of the Minister of the Interior, ???)
 
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