Fact and Fiction About Grain Exchange of Brăila

LUCRĂRI ŞTIINŢIFICE, SERIA I, VOL.XVIII (1) FACT AND FICTION ABOUT GRAIN EXCHANGE OF BRĂILA CRISTIAN C. MERCE1, EMILIAN MERCE1, CRISTINA BIANCA POCOL1 1 University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Cluj Napoca, Romania, e-mail: [email protected] Abstract: The slogans that have invaded the Romanian mass media after 1989 are powerful weapons of those leading a psychological warfare with the obvious intent to present a distorted image of historical realities. They had and have a common goal, the goal of suggesting that Romania before Communism was ahead of Europe in terms of economic and social development. Based on this perception, there was build the idea, the desire of returning to what was called' the 30's heaven' and, at the same time, there was cultivated the idea of hatred against everything that had been done during the communist period and the demolition of these achievements. The falsity of the slogan is proved by the history of stocks early days, including the wheat stock: Japan in 1697; Antwerp in 1531; London 1554; Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Montpellier and Rouen in 1639; Augsburg, Nuremberg and Hamburg in 1550; Berlin 1610; Basel (1699), Paris (1724), Vienna (1761), New York (1792), Brussels (1801), Rome (1827), Madrid (1831), Milan (1833), Geneva (1850), Tokyo (1855) ; the famous grain stock in Chicago (1865). Braila is not mentioned in the history of the most important world stock markets. Moreover, until 1859, Romania was not even a country, and Braila was a stronghold of the Ottoman Empire used mainly for collecting taxes from Moldavia and Wallachia. Key words: grain trade, slogans, psychological weapons, manipulation INTRODUCTION Modelling human nature, characters, manipulating the masses according to certain interests have become treacherous weapons that must be brought to light. Masters of manipulation know very well that it is a flattering practice that compensates for powerlessness, reason for which it can be easily inserted into the souls of men. "Man can be defined as being fable. Nothing more human than the power to fantasize, this endless game with everything around us, often extended to exit any tangible or demonstrable relationship" [1]. It is often heard the idea that Romania fed Europe with bread. In fact, statistics show that the country could not nourish their own people with bread. "It is widely known that Romanians, especially the peasants, were eating polenta and cornmeal in the interbellum period, but not to the full. It is ridiculous to claim that such a nation of polenta-eaters was the breadbasket of Europe. Despite this endemic poverty, Romania, through the owners of large properties, exported much of its grain production. However, the export of grain was a negative social phenomenon in the social context of the interbellum period" [7]. The frequent slogans that have invaded the Romanian mass media since 1989 represent powerful weapons for those who are manoeuvring the psychological warfare. These slogans had and have a common goal, namely to suggest that Romania before Communism was ahead of Europe in terms of economic and social development. Furthermore, the intention was to arouse, on that basis, the desire to return to the so-called interbellum heaven, and to stimulate hatred against everything that was done during the communist period and, implicitly, the demolition of all those achievements. The propagandistic act proceeds from a relative truth and transforms it into an absolute concept. In order to counteract the harmful effect of such slogans, intellectuals have the duty to reconcile the present with the past, to show the lines of continuity as well as those of discontinuity, to weigh, to analyse, but never to condemn irrevocably. The intellectual offering objective visions and approaches of social and economic phenomena is not a prosecutor or a communist, not a worshiper of the nobility, nor a European, nor a 161 FACULTATEA DE MANAGEMENT AGRICOL nationalist or internationalist. The intellectual can be all of these and any of them, provided that he is first a good Romanian with equilibrated visions in appreciating his own past and the historical global context. The exaggerated patriotism that characterized Ceausescu's times came with its exaggerations. However, now, after a quarter-century after his execution, some events of the "golden age" appear to us in a different light, and the protochronic excesses of the regime were reabsorbed into the great effort of overcoming the sad reality of our past. Ceausescu's era was an era of great tension, with impressive material achievements, achievements which an objective observer cannot overlook. Romanians must discard, however, the curse of bragging about unlimited resources and accomplishments that only the Romanian people is praising and validating. It is necessary to shift to a paradigm that reinforces the belief according to which the greatest wealth of a nation is: intelligence, wisdom, truth, work, order, discipline, punctuality, perseverance, entrepreneurship, combativeness. MATERIALS AND METHODS It is believed that the roots of futures trade can be traced in the medieval Japanese system of fairs, which allowed Japan to develop and organize a first futures market since 1697, nearly a century and a half before the United States. However, the first exchange, in the modern sense, was the one in Antwerp. Established in 1531, it had its own building, where there were negotiated colonial goods. Then, in 1554, in London, it had been established an exchange named the London Royal Exchange, which in 1773 focused only on the exchange of financial effects. By 1639, in Paris there are already a number of broker-dealers buying and selling securities, the presence of broker-dealers begin reported later in Lyon, Toulouse and Rouen and, by the end of the eighteenth century, in Montpellier. The first exchanges in Germany appear in middle of the sixteenth century in Augsburg, Nuremberg and Hamburg and, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Berlin Stock Exchange. In the meantime, in Amsterdam goods could have been traded based on options contracts. These contracts allowed the agreement upon a price under which the purchaser acquired from the seller the right to buy a quantity of goods at a fixed date in the future. Only a century later, also in this large commercial center, there was constituted a wheat exchange. Exchanges of this kind were established also in Basel (1699), Paris (1724), Vienna (1761), New York (1792), Brussels (1801), Rome (1827), Madrid (1831), Milan (1833) Geneva (1850), Tokyo (1855) etc. In 1865, some of the most skilled American grain traders decided to group and put the basis of a grain stock - what would later on become the most important grain exchange in the world, the famous Chicago Futures Exchange. With the advent of an exchange offering a centralized venue, investors saw an opportunity in building huge silos where to store the grain for full year consumption. They helped to resolve problems related to the supply of corn that existed in the past in America and helped to establish prices for grain throughout the year. In these new conditions occurred also the shift, the transformation of "spot trade" in "term trade", process first appeared in a form similar to that existing today at the Chicago Board of Trade in 1865. Chicago had become at that time the world capital of grain. This kind of trade was then extended to Liverpool, London, New York, New Orleans, Berlin etc. Over time, the range of products traded on term was extended. Industrial raw materials (oil, copper, lead, zinc), pig carcasses, live cattle, timber, citrus juice, etc., were only some of the products from this list. It is worth noting that, even though CBOT (Chicago Board of Trade) had already launched futures contracts for grain since 1865, the 162 LUCRĂRI ŞTIINŢIFICE, SERIA I, VOL.XVIII (1) first law that actually regulated "the contract market" was adopted only on September 21st, 1922 - "The Grain Futures Act of 1922". The law regulated grain futures transactions, but it did not address problems such as the regulation of the trading mechanism and the prevention of markets manipulation. The stock market crash of 1929 and the economic crisis of the early 30's rushed the adoption in 1936 of The Commodity Exchange Act. As reported by Nicolae Iorga in "History of Trade" (1937), in 1840 in the newspaper named Braila's Mercury the Code of Commerce is presented. The Code includes the first general regulation of trade exchange in Muntenia. The Code had been implemented also in Moldovia, where it was officially adopted after the unification of the Principalities. The Code of Commerce from 1840 is a reproduction of the French Commercial Code from 1807. Later on, in 1865, the newspaper Gazette - the official journal of the Romanian United Principalities appears the first bill for the establishment of trade exchanges in Bucharest, Iasi, Galati and Braila. The project regulated the organization and the functioning of these stocks. The law on intermediary stocks and commodities exchange from 1881, also adopted from French legislation, was the foundation for organizing exchange stocks for goods and values. A year later (1882) was opening the Bucharest Stock Exchange and the Grain and Goods Exchange from Braila. Indeed, ever since the late fourteenth century, under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, Braila became an important commercial and crafts center. Commercial activities at that time were still controlled by Ottoman Empire. The Turks had built a formidable castle here, a castle impossible to conquer, and the treasures collected from the Romanian Principalities were send off to Stamboul through the port of Braila. "The law on trade exchanges" from 1904 redefined the stock exchange institution and the Unification Act of 1929 increased the credibility of the stock exchange institution in Romania.

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