After ending the call with Zheng Yongwen,

Su Yehao added some hot water and drank tea to refresh himself.

He sat in front of the computer in his study, carefully browsing the news headlines that were full of alarmist claims. He could keenly perceive that this crisis was somewhat different from the past.

Whether it was Merrill Lynch, which "accidentally" leaked the news, or Lehman Brothers, which confessed to serious losses, they all seemed to be pressuring the Federal Reserve and Washington to provide funds or take over their acquisition.

Su Yehao guessed that they were probably worried that after the market's soft landing, they would be abandoned. So they simply used the market as a bargaining chip to force the authorities to provide more help as soon as possible.

This meant that there must have been some disagreements between those giants and the Federal Reserve and other institutions in private negotiations. Otherwise, at least Lehman Brothers wouldn't have taken the risk of jumping out and adding fuel to the fire.

This was somewhat of a desperate gamble, with a hint of going rogue.

The subprime mortgage market, with a total scale of more than one trillion U.S. dollars, had already digested a small portion of bad debts.

For example, Bear Stearns, one of the five major investment banks, was taken over by JP Morgan after bankruptcy, and the subprime losses were converted into corporate bad debts. There were many, many such examples.

However, the remaining subprime mortgage scale was still more than one trillion U.S. dollars. The power of this powder keg was still enough to overturn the global economy.

If given more time, and slowly digested as in the past year or so, it might really be possible to achieve a soft landing.

Unfortunately,

the Federal Reserve and Washington could afford to wait, but a group of financial institutions affected by subprime mortgages had reached the edge of life and death.

Rather than letting their assets be cleared to zero, it was better to risk everything and use the global economy as a bargaining chip to force the authorities to provide more help as soon as possible, so that at least some scraps would be left, and not everything would be cleared.

With the style of those Wall Street elites, Su Yehao had no doubt that they could be so bold.

After all, instead of win-win cooperation, harming others to benefit oneself is the norm on Wall Street.

Regarding the subprime mortgage crisis, there had always been solutions.

If hundreds of billions of dollars were printed, and the government underwrote and repurchased the subprime mortgage financial derivatives on the market, the entire crisis could be eliminated. Anyway, countless amounts of money were being printed like crazy, so it wouldn't hurt to print a little more.

The problem was that the taxpayers wouldn't agree. It happened to be the year of the donkey and elephant fight, and an emergency appropriation plan could not be passed.

Combining this background,

Su Yehao vaguely felt that maybe there would be some unexpected surprises today.

As long as Washington and the Federal Reserve clearly stated that they would sit idly by, it would likely trigger a systemic financial tsunami, enough to sweep the globe as it did in his previous life.

……

Communication, discussion, and meetings would all take time.

Su Yehao was still sleepy and didn't sit in front of the computer, waiting foolishly for the other shoe to drop. He only turned on the phone's vibration and went back to bed to rest.

He seemed to be detached, but in reality, the short positions with a total scale of nearly 20 billion U.S. dollars, every dollar of stock sold, was a bullet fired at those financial giants.

The market was already on edge, lacking active takers. Zheng Yongwen and his team's short orders and released news were affecting market confidence, successfully causing a trend of shorting U.S. stocks, tilting the balance in Su Yehao's favor.

Before this,

A-shares had already exploded, and the property market in the north was half-dead due to the economic impact.

Coupled with the poor performance of the foreign trade market, Su Yehao had nothing to worry about. Anyway, even if the situation was worse, it wouldn't be much more difficult than it was now.

According to the information he received, many plans had already been prepared in advance, including an economic stimulus plan with a scale of trillions of RMB. With this shot in the arm, the effect would be immediate.

And Su Yehao himself would also quietly bottom out, "flooding" the market with three to four hundred billion RMB.

The reason for being low-key was to avoid causing resistance in the international market, especially the U.S. market. Since they hadn't torn their faces yet and still wanted to make money in the United States, it was best not to do the disgusting thing of eating from the bowl and cursing the cook.

If there was an opportunity, Su Yehao would even be willing to "help" by acquiring one or two American banks and investment banks, to win market goodwill, continue to strengthen his own strength, and make SSSSSS Asset Management Group even better, taking the opportunity to expand its international business map.

——————————

A little after six in the morning.

The phone on the pillow vibrated, and Jiang Yu, whose sweet dream was disturbed, was very unhappy. She directly kicked Su Yehao awake, turned over, and continued to sleep.

Su Yehao almost fell out of bed, with a dazed look on his face. He scratched his head, picked up the phone, swiped the screen to answer, and held it to his ear.

He only heard Zheng Yongwen's excited voice on the other end of the phone:

"The Secretary of the Treasury just held a temporary press conference and publicly announced that he will not use taxpayers' money to rescue Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers! Although it's after-hours news, as long as there are no more changes, the market will definitely plummet, and we're about to succeed!"

Su Yehao subconsciously wanted to go to the study, but temporarily changed his route to go to the bathroom first, answering:

"Congratulations, congratulations to you, and congratulations to myself. Since it's the Secretary of the Treasury speaking in person, instead of finding a mouthpiece to test the market sentiment, it's basically stable, right? Do you think if I take the initiative to extend an olive branch, there's a chance to acquire Merrill Lynch?"

In order to short, Zheng Yongwen had thoroughly researched these companies, and immediately said:

"You're not the only one interested in Merrill Lynch. There are rumors that Morgan Stanley is in contact with Merrill Lynch, but that was a week ago, and now there should be changes. To prevent a market crash, Morgan Stanley's board of directors may be willing to make some efforts. The stock price falling is already inevitable, which is another matter. You can try, but you have to wait until after closing the position."

With bitterness in his mouth, Su Yehao started brushing his teeth again, his voice slurred: "Okay, Lehman Brothers took the initiative to blow itself up, the shareholders are already dumbfounded, right?"

"It didn't have any impact. Morgan Stanley was already more interested in Merrill Lynch and already had the idea of saving it, but no company paid attention to Lehman Brothers, which had extremely high debts. It can be said that its self-destruction was the result of being forced to do so. If anyone was willing to help Lehman Brothers, things wouldn't have been so extreme. I have to thank its board of directors."

It had been more than half a year since he stopped working at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange due to illness, and Zheng Yongwen had only been busy shorting U.S. stocks.

Seeing that he had fueled the flames and successfully ignited this powder keg, Zheng Yongwen, who hadn't slept all night, was still excited and suggested: "Let's have breakfast and chat in person? Let's go to Ho Hung Kee in Causeway Bay, I want to eat his wonton noodles."

Su Yehao immediately replied: "Okay, driving over should be quite fast, let's meet at the store in forty minutes."

"Okay."

Hanging up the phone.

Su Yehao checked the relevant news while getting dressed.

The financial pages were overwhelmingly full of negative reports about Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual Bank, and other companies.

Compared to the phrase "storm is coming," the Secretary of the Treasury's speech was more like a tsunami had directly slapped him in the face.

When the securities trading markets in various places opened, a plunge was inevitable…