Talk:Fournival/@comment-72.171.16.179-20140808205845/@comment-23878607-20141030133704

Probably some form of war profiteering.

One of the problems about commodity trading with enemies of the state is that by exchanging your own country's currency (I'll go with gold for convenience's sake), you're removing hard cash out of the home country's economy and injecting it into that of the enemy's. If the home country's economy is not too stable, that could be easily construed as treasonous if that country could not easily replace the lost metal coinage.