Chapter 1 Preparing for the Storm

It took several days to prepare.

So Yieh-Hao tapped into his own team, drawing upon several top talents for assistance.

Among them were the exceptionally intelligent Feng Tiancai, as well as financial analysts and traders who had previously worked at companies such as Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.

Zheng Yongwen was put in charge of leading the work.

Using the excuse of needing surgery and a long period of recovery, Zheng Yongwen had already taken temporary leave, entrusting his work at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to a proxy.

The goal of this small team was clear: to find a way to ignite the powder keg and reap a fortune by shorting.

Initially, only a framework was being built. There was still much work to be prepared. Zheng Yongwen was worried that he wouldn't be able to handle everything, so he temporarily put aside his work at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to concentrate on this side, clearly aiming to make a big score.

As the financier.

The venue was naturally arranged by So Yieh-Hao. He arranged an entire floor of office space in Cyberport, more than enough with its thousands of square meters.

While taking Zheng Yongwen and Feng Tiancai on a tour of the office.

So Yieh-Hao noticed that looking out of the floor-to-ceiling windows, he could see his own spaceship villa. The sightseeing tower next to it was in its final stages, with plans to officially light it up on January 1, 2008.

Facing the mostly empty office, Zheng Yongwen was relatively satisfied, telling him at that moment:

"I've collected some data. The entire U.S. mortgage market is about seven to eight trillion dollars in total, of which about one and a half trillion dollars are subprime mortgages, accounting for about 20% of the entire mortgage market. With the Federal Reserve backing it, it's too big to fail, making this matter more troublesome than imagined."

Feng Tiancai also nodded, saying:

"The Federal Reserve has repeatedly injected funds to support and provide special funds to institutions facing difficulties. Instead of focusing on the subprime mortgage bond market itself, I find the U.S. inflation more interesting. The Federal Reserve is in a dilemma, not daring to raise interest rates sharply to detonate the market, while constantly paying attention to the impact of inflation on the economy. It depends on how they respond. I haven't found any hope for making a move in the short term."

So Yieh-Hao couldn't remember exactly when the financial tsunami caused by the subprime mortgage crisis would occur, only that it was in 2008, and that a movie was later made about it.

Without investigation, there is no right to speak. So Yieh-Hao didn't think he would be smarter than Zheng Yongwen and Feng Tiancai in this matter, so he only asked:

"Is the current manpower sufficient? Just tell me directly if you need anything. I haven't eaten pork, but I've seen pigs run. To short the United States, we need to wait for a suitable opportunity, and also find suitable helpers. Soros' Quantum Fund is of average size. That old guy's destructive power lies in his ability to call upon international hot money to follow, attracting others to cooperate in shaping the overall trend."

As a man who had once crossed swords with Soros and even slightly prevailed.

Zheng Yongwen smiled slightly, concealing his achievements and fame, and said calmly:

"It's too early to talk about those things. We need to collect enough data first, and find weak points from the clues that we can exploit. The manpower is indeed a bit short, but for this kind of thing, it's mainly about quality, not quantity. Help me arrange an assistant responsible for liaison, and I'll mention it to them when I need something. Is that okay?"

"Of course, no problem."

So Yieh-Hao crossed his arms over his chest, received a reminder from his bodyguard to stay away from the window, and added, "Actually, I feel that if the current trend continues, unless they directly take out hundreds of billions of dollars to take over and eat up those subprime garbage bonds, the economy may collapse even if we do nothing. My idea is to detonate this bomb before the United States is ready, and try to disrupt the Federal Reserve's steps as much as possible."

Feng Tiancai said decisively:

"No one is willing to go against the Federal Reserve. Even if Wall Street unites, it's difficult to change the Federal Reserve's decisions."

Zheng Yongwen also said:

"The Federal Reserve's round of interest rate hikes failed to harvest successfully, but it messed up its own domestic subprime mortgage market. The high interest rates brought by the rate hikes caused heavy losses to homebuyers, and housing prices plummeted, leading them to abandon their mortgage repayments, becoming the fuse for the subprime crisis."

"Since September, the Federal Reserve has announced interest rate cuts, but the market has fallen into panic. After all, if the subprime mortgage problem weren't too serious, how could they start injecting funds before inflation control was in place, causing a major blow to market confidence."

"In my opinion, a soft landing is almost impossible. To alleviate the current problems, they can only restart the printing press, but injecting funds will exacerbate inflation and trigger an economic recession. In this case, it is indeed possible to let it collapse naturally. We only need to provide some guidance and push it step by step to the edge of the cliff..."

Even though he could understand every sentence, putting them together gave So Yieh-Hao a slight headache.

As the world's largest economy, the United States cannot be easily manipulated like some fragile markets.

For example, the economy of Casino, 1997. As long as So Yieh-Hao was willing, he could even double or triple the GDP of that year. However, the size was there, and from a global perspective, it had little impact.

So Yieh-Hao hadn't inflated to the point of thinking he had the strength to wrestle with the Federal Reserve. He had no objection to Zheng Yongwen's statement that they could only guide it, and he quite agreed, stating:

"Yong-ge, you have some weight in the financial world. When the time comes, you should desperately sing short first. I will also come out to express my position when necessary and try to drag them down. Anyway, some people in Washington have been unhappy with me for a long time, and they have also linked me to the North, trying to suppress me and force me to sell my shares in Yanwenzi, Google, ASML, and Apple Intelligence, so that users will feel disgusted with me. Now that they are overwhelmed, they don't have the energy to suppress me. If I can gain a few more years of development opportunity, my power will be more stable than it is now."

Feng Tiancai didn't quite understand So Yieh-Hao's true thoughts and thought that what he was hearing now was the truth. He stroked his chin and replied:

"That's true. As long as you, boss, show enough strength, they should make some concessions to shut you up. If you, boss, personally sing short, the impact may not be less than a Federal Reserve interest rate hike of twenty-five basis points."

After hearing his words, Zheng Yongwen jokingly said:

"It may also be equivalent to an interest rate hike of fifty basis points. Based on past experience, the business that Little So is optimistic about is almost 100% correct. Who wouldn't be afraid? The reason why the market is still holding on is because people believe that the United States will solve the subprime mortgage problem. What we really need to do is to destroy this confidence."

Since they were all his own people, So Yieh-Hao was too lazy to be humble, boasting about himself:

"It's a pity that I can't use some underhanded tricks, such as increasing the push of negative news through the Internet, which is equivalent to handing a knife to others, giving them a chance to suppress me. Otherwise, my influence would be even greater..."