The googolpexianaires

 Hi All, 

The Gilded Age of Earth  was in full swing ,30 years of relative peace and posterity which  began in "the gay nineties" and was continuing into the mid "roaring" twenties. 2124, 4 years after President F'szoorg won his second term of office and achieved what no other President had done, which was to admit more members into the United Union of Earther States than any other Presidents : in part because Parliament who actually did the deciding on these matters was continually divided by fears that one party or the other would benefit from this or that state joining. When States did join, it was often at the expense of a big political compromise, such as massive tax cuts or spending programmes. In any event , 140,000 systems owned by private enterprise, religions and wealthy individuals  as well as Federal planets, were reformed as 4,778 States , which when combined with those already in the Union gave a total  5,065 States and according to the census (there hadn't been one since 2099) a polity of 120 trillion people. 

This fuelled internal and interstellar  trade, helped along by infrastructure spending and the fact that the Federal Government under the "equal footing clause" of the Constitution had to take on the public debt of these new states, from the state to the City and Municipal level.  The debts were particularly high for those places that had been founded by private enterprise: buying and in most cases having to terraform a planet is extremely costly, let alone running one. The Treasury was rightly concerned about taking on too much debt, but David Elharar, the Galaxies joint richest man, found a loophole. 

The loophole ? Of the 4,778 territories, his business owned 1,249 and he personally owned 1 system, as did his business partner Jacob Horowitz. All of 1,251 territories had their own currencies and  subsequently also had their own central bank. The plan was that Elharar would be licensed in all  of theses territories to mint coins to the value of the total debts that the Federal government was going to pay off, plus any interest. For services rendered Elharar also obtained authority to mint  themselves a little bit extra coinage, as a "fee". 

These sextillion- in face value -silver   Francs, Marks and Dollar coins would be deposited into a safe at each bank, labelled as a "gift" for the Federal Treasury. Upon becoming a state, The Bank of Earth, the Federal Central Bank, would take over these regional Central Banks and credit amount of  the face value of the coins into the account that the Federal  Treasury had with them, at the agreed exchange rate that would be written into the charter making the state into a territory. In so doing the Treasury would suddenly find itself with the necessary funds with which to pay back the debts of these colonies. 

The risk of inflation, which such in effect money printing would usually produce,  Elharar advised the Federal Treasury, was minimal because of the flourishing Interstellar Trade across three galaxies facilitated a massive Forex (foreign exchange) market in which demand for Pounds was high, in part because of a positive balance of payments, but also to pay for the necessary shipping, insurance and toll fees to access the only two known wormholes, which because Elharar owned, had to be paid in Pounds.

In any event the plan went ahead and thanks to that little 'fee' , David Elharar (and his long time business partner) became googolpexianaires (that is ten to the power of a googolplex, or in other words a number which even mega computers struggle with, as near an infinite as a human mind can get in terms of numbers).  This should have made them both happy, but not when they appeared in front of a Parliamentary Committee to be questioned in a way that tried to  embarrass and humiliate:  by all of the left on the committee, but also several of the populist right. It was good theatre and they gave as good as they got- I suppose being twenty years shy of 200 does that- and strangely the public gave them a plus 60% approval rating, which increased the poorer the demographic and they did especially well among women between 36 and 50, which maybe explains why David has so many wives . What was embarrassing was when those same Parliamentarians and Senators came looking with their begging bowl for campaign funds. They were politely told to bugger off.