Reformed Bank Of The Empire
History
The Reformed Bank of the Empire was established during the Imperial Congress. This Bank was initially created as an attempt to check Imperial power. Those who authored the bill hoped that the Bank would help reform government by passing more power to the Congress, and bring about some semblance of the old Republic.
The strategy behind this Reformed Bank was to unify currency throughout the Empire. The first purpose of the Bank was to find the base material upon which the currency would establish its value. After an exhaustive fifteen year study, it was determined that no one material would suffice. The primary reason was because using any one material would inherently enrich certain systems more than others. Even logical materials, such as the raw monopole material, presented the same problem.
Eventually, the Reformed Bank attempted to use a collection of key industrial materials as an index of the value of the “Imperial.” However, this index never worked in practice. Regardless, over the Bank’s second generation of operation, the Indexed Imperial was decreed as the primary unit of currency.
After a generation, the Index of materials upon which the Indexed Imperial was based failed. Speculators discovered a flaw in the algorythm used to calculate the Index. They exploited this flaw to steal billions of Indexed Imperials worth of index materials from the Empire. The Emperor was reduced to near bankruptcy, and instigated the Kabal Nebrotensia to generate funds to restore his wealth. During the brief time between the bankruptcy and Kabal Nebrotensia, the Imperial Congress was nearly able to wrest control of the Empire from the Emperor. This, in turn, led to the Endyphad Konjrez, where covert forces of the Imperial Congress and the Emperor fought openly. The Congress hoped to defeat the Kabal and permanently hobble the Emperor. The result of this is well documented in Endyphad Konjrez.
Index Imperial
The Index Imperial was the only cohesive currency used for any period of time during the Empire. It failed primarily because it relied upon physical possession of the materials used to create the index. When the Reformed Bank reported its findings to the Imperial Congress, the finding contained a typographical error requiring that the Bank hold huge quantities of the various index materials. This was deemed an error by later scholars because were this not required, then scholars believe the Index Imperial would not have been lootable–although the value of the Imperial would have been given to greater speculation.
Index materials comprised key industrial materials held in surplus by major systems. This was a compromise that ensured that, while some systems were enriched as a consequence, then at least those systems enriched were already quite wealthy and powerful.
Reformed Imperial
Briefly after the failure of the Index Imperial currency, an attempt was made to base a new Imperial on a non-volitale, non-exploitable basis: manpower. This Reformed Imperial based value on the monthly labor of the common laborer as averaged among the several Imperial Core Worlds.
Retrospective
Historical analysis of the Imperial and the Reformed Bank of the Empire reveal a key flaw in the approach and a simple solution. Had the Imperial been used solely as a unit of currency between system governments and the Empire as a unit of trade, then it might have survived speculators and stablized trade in the Empire–a systemic problem throughout its history. However, since the Imperial Congress hoped to use the Bank to overthrow the Emperor, then its near success in the Endyphad Konjrez suggests the Bank was more successful than mainstream historians will suggest.