A question about the Crown's debts.

[SeanF]

Of course.

But you have to take the financial situation and the barter part of the economy into account: Only cities provide a meaningful amount of taxes in coin. Farmer Pate gives some grain to his Lord and works a month on his Lord's projects, but he pays not a single penny in coin. And you can't ship 20,000 bushels of grain from let's say Pennytree to KL.

Only merchants and craftsmen regularly handle coin. Only in towns and cities are taxes paid in coin. Only there can the Crown gather their taxes.

That means KL (recently sacked) and Duskendale (sacked and economically ruined) are the prime sources of the Crown's income, with Lannisport (got a gigantic taxbreak a couple years ago) and Oldtown (same)

as runners up. White Harbour and Gulltown pay similar, but are vastly smaller.

Driftmark has been ruined earlier.

At the end of Robert's Rebellion, the Crown's revenue streams were basically ruined while Robert had to pay for the war. And then he gave Dragonstone and it's incomes away as well.

Small wonder LF's predecessors were hard-pressed.

Ah, yes, I'd overlooked the loss of revenue from the Sack of Kings Landing and the ruin of Duskendale. War debts might, in whole or part, be covered by confiscation of lands from the other side. But, combined with rebuilding the

Royal Navy, the Greyjoy rebellion, rampant graft, and Robert's extravagance and incompetence, I can see how debts would mount up.

Edit: By the time the story starts, KL must be generating a big income again, but was probably generating very little for some time after the Sack.

[Blackfish Tully]

Well, LF reinvested.

And lost it all when war broke out.

Exactly, the Iron Throne was not short of cash it just had reinvested all it's profits back into the commercial enterprises. Why have gold sitting around in a treasury when you can lend it out and make interest on it? The war (as war's will do ) destroyed the economy and wiped out most of the Iron Thrones's investments. Littlefinger had created an economy that was perfectly set to operate in peacetime but would crumble during wartime(a war he started). Knowing the war was coming he probably had his personal investment set up to maximize their profits during the war and then got out right before it all went to hell. Pretty flawless playing of the game.

[The Dragons Hand]

Tourney's, right?

What was the total prize money for the Tourney of the hand? Like 80,000 golden dragons?

[The Dragons Hand]

Only debt can pay for life.

You and your bloody one liners.

[Mithras]

The Antler Men were all rich men, traders, merchants, craftsmen who owed considerable amount of gold to the crown. LF as the Master of Coins loaned them so much of crown's gold. Here is my take of LF's embezzlement scheme:

Suppose that a random blacksmith takes credit from LF who has the authority to give crown’s gold as debt. Then the blacksmith spends that gold to buy raw materials to work his craft. He intends to produce goods and make profit, some of which will be used to pay his debt to the crown along with the interest. But since the debtors are in his pocket, LF forces them to buy their raw materials from LF’s own institutions or other merchants who are also in LF's pocket. Of course, you can imagine that since this whole trade is arranged and corrupt, the raw materials are overcharged and excessive amount of profit is produced some of which find their way to LF’s pocket as tribute.

Another machination of LF is about selling positions and offices. The people who need to buy offices do that because they want to embezzle gold for themselves by using the authority of the said office. And since LF sells those offices, he takes his share from that embezzled gold. Each office sold buy LF provides a steady income to LF. The buyers of those offices have to pay their tributes to LF, otherwise they are replaced. For example the crown was paying wages to nonexistent gaolers. LF and the chief gaoler were probably sharing the salary of the non-existen gaolers.

One can imagine that each person recruited by Janos was paying him a part of their income. In return, Janos was also paying LF some of his own income. Or you can imagine that the Gold Cloaks need provisions. Since Janos and LF are in charge of spending crown's gold for this purpose, they make an agreement with a merchant and buy the provisions with overcharged prizes. Excessive profit is shared by all the participants.

So, now we can understand how Varys robbed LF from hell of an income by simply having a paper signed by Tyrion to arrest and execute the Anterl Men. Moreover, the crown will never take its gold from those debtors because dead men do not pay their debts. So, thiw will lead to the crown neglecting to pay its debts to the IB.

Since LF will have access to almost any information about the finances of the real sector, he will know which merchant will face difficulty, which merchant will get lucky, which prices will get low and which prices will get high, which goods will be scarce and which goods will be abundant and so on. So, LF obtains all the information he needs to make perfect investments and multiply his own wealth.

[shadow282]

So, now we can understand how Varys robbed LF from hell of an income by simply having a paper signed by Tyrion to arrest and execute the Anterl Men. Moreover, the crown will never take its gold from those debtors because dead men do not pay their debts. So, thiw will lead to the crown neglecting to pay its debts to the IB.

Unless they didn't seize their assets (and why the hell wouldn't they?) the crown probably made a nice profit over it actually.

[Poodle Pup From Astapor]

Unless they didn't seize their assets (and why the hell wouldn't they?) the crown probably made a nice profit over it actually.

Tyrion found out about it after the fact, after they were killed and their assets were taken by whatever heirs / creditors they had. It's unlikely that there's a reliable enough paper trail at this point to track all those assets and sieze them. Tyrion says something along those lines too, that it would be futile to try to get those money from heirs, or something like that.