Chapter 512: Undertaker of the US Stock Market!
Bill Gates contacted the Saltwater Fund through his own foundation and directly invested 1 billion US dollars. During the consultation, Ian Ball learned that this money would be used to short Enron, and he was almost scared to his knees.
Short Enron?
Apart from anything else, the urine of every Enron employee would be enough to flood the salt water fund.
At that time, it will truly deserve the name of "salt water".
Ian Ball came to Lu Yiming in a hurry. After he entered the villa, he asked hurriedly, "I just received a billion US dollars from the Gates Foundation, saying that it was going to short Enron. Is this true?"
Lu Yiming had never told him about this matter!
In fact, Lu Yiming had been planning this for a long time, but he felt that now was not the best opportunity, so he did not tell Ian Ball. They happened to talk about this matter while playing golf, so Lu Yiming just took the opportunity to tell him about it.
Lu Yiming poured a glass of rum for Ian Ball and said in a relaxed tone: "What? Are you scared?"
Ian Ball took the rum and took a sip. The light sweetness mixed with the stimulation of alcohol lingered on the tip of his tongue.
Ian Ball didn't taste any sweetness, he only felt a bitter taste.
"That's Enron Group. How can I not be afraid?"
It destroyed the jobs of 20,000 people in one go and caused countless financial losses to the capital forces behind Enron. This was a huge feud.
Ian Ball wouldn't be surprised if he was dragged down to the bottom of the Hudson River while jogging in the morning.
His hands are still shaking.
He really can't bear such a big pot.
Lu Yiming sat in front of him with a normal expression and looked at him calmly: "How much money have you made recently?"
Ian Ball was stunned when he heard this, and then said in a low voice: "One hundred and twenty million US dollars."
If he had this money in the past, he would never be able to earn it in his lifetime.
But under Lu Yiming's guidance, he made money effortlessly. Not only did he become rich overnight, but he also became famous. This kind of fame and fortune was exactly what he had been longing for in the past!
Lu Yiming looked at Ian Ball coldly and asked, "It feels great to make money and become famous, right? If you think it's too hot, I don't mind finding someone else to do it."
Hearing Lu Yiming say this, Ian Ball shuddered all over and almost couldn't hold the wine glass.
He thought about himself half a month ago, and then thought about his current glory.
After a moment, he gritted his teeth and said, "Mr. Lu, I know what to do. Please give me another chance!"
As the saying goes, people die for money and birds die for food. Ian Ball is absolutely unwilling to go back to the life he had in the past.
The feeling of having both fame and fortune was so fascinating to him.
He knew very well that he was now just Lu Yiming's tool. A word from Lu Yiming could make him rich and powerful, but could also make him fall into the abyss again.
The most painful thing in a person’s life is not that the person dies with unspent money, but that the money has been spent but the person is still alive.
That would be worse than death.
Obviously, he is a greedy person who is more afraid of poverty than death!
What's more, he may not die. At most, he can spend more money and hire a few more bodyguards. As long as he can become a billionaire and enter the upper class, what's wrong with taking some risks?
On the contrary, if he missed this opportunity, it would be extremely difficult for him to climb up again.
Lu Yiming shook the wine glass in his hand, smiling: "Do your best and don't let me down. Remember, there are also many big shots behind you who are watching you."
Ian Ball finally cheered up, nodded seriously, and then drank the rum in the glass.
Lu Yiming smiled and said, "Do you know why I invited you to drink rum?"
Ian Ball was stunned by Lu Yiming's unconventional thinking. He thought carefully about the history of rum and said, "Rum originated in the Caribbean in the 17th century. After it was brewed, it was deeply loved by pirates. Do you mean that we should be like pirates, fearless of wind and waves, and always full of wildness and plunder?"
A smile of success appeared on Lu Yiming's face: "I have to say, your reading comprehension score is perfect. But the main reason is that I just happened to have a bottle of rum in my hand, that's all."
Ian Ball: "..."
Sure enough, Mr. Lu has a kind of unknown evil taste.
Last time it was a dead rat.
This time it was rum.
A few days later, the already volatile U.S. stock market once again broke out a shocking piece of news.
Ian Ball made a serious revelation in front of the American audience on a famous talk show: "In my recent investigation of energy companies, I found that Enron's return on investment was significantly low. Even when the company was at its peak, its return on investment was only 6%, while the return rate of the same industry was usually three times that figure."
The host also cooperated and pretended to be surprised: "Does this mean that there is something wrong with Enron?"
Ian Ball said righteously: "Yes, the problem is very serious. I suggest that the Department of Justice immediately investigate the financial situation of Enron. We must not allow such a black sheep to continue to deceive innocent investors."
After the show was broadcast, the incident immediately caused an uproar!
After all, the Saltwater Fund's target this time is the energy giant Enron!
Texas, the birthplace of American Iai, has always been known for its tough folk customs and abundant martial arts ethics.
The headquarters of Enron is located here, and it is a well-known star enterprise in Texas.
When the company was founded in 1985, it took advantage of the U.S. policy of allowing energy privatization and non-bank companies to engage in financial business, quickly monopolized the energy supply of the United States, and introduced energy supply into the stock and futures trading markets.
Enron quickly grew from an unknown small company to an energy giant, and its stock price rose from less than $10 per share to $89 per share at an astonishing speed. Even technology companies such as Microsoft and Apple could only sigh in envy and feel inferior.
If you were to ask, what advanced business philosophy, or innovative products and services were the reason Enron rose so quickly?
Sorry, neither.
Enron's rapid rise and success were based on the indestructible network of relationships behind it.
The big backers behind it are the CIA, the Pentagon and the U.S. Treasury Department. If anyone thinks that doing business in the United States doesn't require personal connections and relationships, then you can donate your brain.
Kenneth Lay, CEO of Enron, was a Pentagon official who worked for the U.S. Department of Defense during the Vietnam War.
Another important member of the company's board of directors is Frank Wisner, whose father is the former head of the CIA. He is a fellow villager of the two Bush presidents and a childhood friend of George W. Bush.
In addition, Franka Wisner herself holds multiple positions and is also a member of the board of directors of AIG, the US insurance giant.
What’s interesting is that AIG was founded in Xia Country, but has been providing property insurance services to the US military. This business model sounds extremely outrageous.
The former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert serves as an independent director of Citigroup and is a close friend of Enron's Mr. Lei.
In addition, Enron formed an alliance with several affiliated companies, and coincidentally, all of these companies were doing business with the U.S. military.
The ignorant are fearless. The more you know about Enron’s background, the more you will understand that you cannot touch a tiger’s butt.
If they get angry, they can shoot down planes with missiles.
At this time, Enron's headquarters.
Kenneth Lay was watching a talk show rerun on TV, smashing his teacup and yelling, "Shit, shit, shit!"
Enron Corporation has had its pants stripped off now, it would be strange if the CEO could still sit still. What Ian Ball did was not just digging up his ancestors' graves, it was simply waving a shovel and hitting him on the head.
If he hadn't been concerned about the repercussions, Kenneth Ray would have wanted to find a team of gunmen to kill Ian Ball directly.
"Calm down."
Franka Wisner smoked a cigar, blew out a beautiful smoke ring, and said calmly: "Now is not the time to vent your anger. If you want revenge, there will be plenty of opportunities in the future. The most important thing now is how to solve the problem."
Kenneth Ray looked frustrated: "How to solve it? Can you make money, or can I make money?"
Enron's biggest problem now is poor management.
As for how an energy giant with an industry monopoly could be so poorly managed, how so many bad debts came about, and how the profits disappeared, only God knows.
However, this is not surprising at all. After all, a certain petrochemical company or an oil company on the other side of the ocean can also buy chandeliers worth 40 million and still suffer losses.
Don’t ask, because if you ask, it means you don’t understand economics.
It would have been fine if this mess hadn't been exposed. After all, even Arthur Andersen, one of the top five accounting firms in the world, helped to cook the books, and ordinary people wouldn't be able to see any problems.
But now someone has poked a hole in the sky, and even God coming down to earth will be of no use.
Taking a deep breath, Franka Wisner suggested: "If it really doesn't work, we can only give up some of it."
This may sound obscure, but in fact, it means that the money of small and medium-sized investors can be lost, but the money of the company's top management and the interests of the bigwigs behind the scenes must be protected with all efforts.
After all, we have to consider the overall situation.
After listening to this, Kenneth Ray nodded with difficulty: "I'll try my best."
Then Franka Wisner frowned again and asked, "Do you know who is behind this? I always feel that everything is too coincidental. I'm afraid the truth is not that simple."
Speaking of this, Kenneth Ray gnashed his teeth in hatred and said without hesitation: "It's the group of vampires on Wall Street in New York. They are closely related to Epstein!"
The general election is coming soon, and because of the zipper gate incident, the struggle between the two major parties in the United States is becoming increasingly fierce.
So Kenneth Lay naturally had reason to suspect that Epstein was behind the incident. First of all, the vampires on Wall Street would definitely do this. As long as there is money to be made, there is nothing they would not do.
Secondly, Epstein has a close relationship with the current President of the United States and is a member of a hostile party. The two sides dislike each other and cannot see eye to eye.
After hearing this, Franka Wisner could not help but denounce him, saying, "Epstein is such a bastard, he is still so unscrupulous. Forget it, we have been caught in a weak spot, so let's keep a low profile for a while. After the new election, there will be plenty of opportunities to settle the score later."
Kenneth Ray nodded helplessly. No matter how unhappy he was, there was nothing he could do but endure it.
In just a few weeks, the once huge business empire collapsed.
The already plummeting U.S. stock market fell even further, especially for small and medium-sized investors who held Enron stock and bought Enron bonds , who lost all their money.
However, what is strange is that a large number of media newspapers did not mention the reasons behind Enron's bankruptcy. Instead, they deliberately guided public opinion and the public's attention, so that even those investors who lost money considered themselves unlucky and thought that Enron was simply poorly managed.
Looking at the news in the newspaper, Li Yiwen, who knew the inside story and the truth, found it unbelievable: "Where is the freedom of the press? Did the reporters who wrote these articles really not receive any money?"
As a typical enterprise combining "capital" and "power", the rise and fall of Enron can almost be said to be a consistent presentation of the operating model of Europe and the United States for hundreds of years.
And looking back, this incident was of symbolic significance, as it was a precursor to the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.
Despite such a huge asset scale, the actual bankruptcy process took only a few weeks. It collapsed at a speed so fast that people had no time to react.
What’s interesting is that the ones who suffered heavy losses were all small and medium-sized investors, while a large number of company executives and bigwigs behind the scenes managed to get away with it unscathed.
The best part is, no one is responsible!
Lu Yiming had seen through this kind of thing a long time ago, so his tone was quite disdainful: "The media is just the mouthpiece of the powerful, and public opinion is strictly controlled everywhere."
Li Yiwen's mouth was full of disdain: "Thank goodness these white people have the nerve to brag about their freedom of speech all day long. I don't think they have any freedom at all."
Before deciding to take action, Lu Yiming and Li Yiwen had already secretly investigated Enron thoroughly, so they naturally knew how many inside stories and unspeakable truths were hidden in it.
The seeds of Enron's bankruptcy were actually planted at its inception.
In 1993, during the George H.W. Bush administration, Enron's chief financial officer, Thomas Kelly, forced Kuwait to give Enron the order to rebuild the Shuaiba power plant, even though Enron's bid was much higher than that of other suppliers at the time.
In 1998, Enron used George H.W. Bush to persuade George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, to award the contract to build a natural gas pipeline in Argentina to Enron through official pressure.
In return, a close friend of the Bush family became the president of this project. Other projects acquired in the same way include the power plant of India, the energy project in Indonesia, and the natural gas pipeline from Russia to Europe.
In return, Enron has been providing transfusions to the politicians they support and spending a lot of money on political elections.
In order to promote the policies of these ruling parties, Enron spent a large amount of money on public opinion campaigns, set up funds for non-governmental organizations, and injected funds into various associations and think tanks related to government policies.
Of course, these are not accounts that can be written openly, and they must be accounted for through the small companies under its control. The operation method is to transfer the losses to the accounts of the small companies under actual control through the dazzling accounts of the subsidiaries, and then transfer the profits of the small companies to Enron.
They falsify accounts to obtain credit ratings, then obtain low-interest loans from banks and raise money from the stock market.
In this way, since the 1990s, Enron has been transferring funds to politicians in Britain and the United States.
As time went by, Enron's false accounts and bad debts increased. The company's performance reports were all fake, and the loopholes in its financial system could no longer be covered up.
Now that the fig leaf has been torn off, what awaits Enron is naturally a broken capital chain, a decline in credit rating leading to early maturity of debts, falling stock prices and shrinking assets, and the rapid collapse of the entire group.
What is strange is that after Enron's carefully planned, institutionalized and systematic financial fraud that lasted for many years was exposed and led to its bankruptcy, it did not cause much public opinion or legal consequences.
A large number of executives escaped unscathed, while shareholders paid the bill and considered themselves unlucky. If there were no power behind the scenes to settle such an incident, I'm afraid even a dog would not believe it.
This is the law that governs the operation of the capitalist world. Capital has been manipulating politics and ordinary people, taking away a large amount of wealth from ordinary people in a way that they simply cannot understand.
Li Yiwen threw down the newspaper and sighed, "With such a bunch of bastards, how can the United States not perish?"
Lu Yiming smiled and said, "A lean camel is bigger than a horse. With the foundation of the Lighthouse Country, it is enough for them to toss around for decades. And if they don't toss around, how can we have the opportunity to make a fortune?"
By shorting Enron, Saltwater Fund made an astonishing profit of more than $1.7 billion in just a few weeks, shocking the entire Wall Street.
However, few people know that Lu Yiming can take away a full $500 million from it.
Even Li Yiwen said sincerely: "Indeed, the profits from this wave are equal to the total profits from our short selling of dozens of Internet companies in the US stock market."
Under Lu Yiming's instructions, Ian Ball desperately shorted Enron, while Epstein, Bill Gates and others behind the scenes continued to mobilize their forces and use the propaganda media in their hands to expose Enron's problems.
And every time a new problem was exposed, Ian Ball always managed to coincidentally increase his short position in advance. Finally, after Enron went bankrupt, he bought back Enron shares at a negligible price to close his position. Saltwater Fund made a huge profit from it, and Ian Ball became famous again by shorting Enron shares.
Now, Wall Street fund managers have even given him a resounding nickname - the undertaker of the American stock market!
After all, he was the ruthless man who kicked An Ran into the grave.
Many previously hot Internet companies were also buried by Ian Ball.
Ian Ball is now quite notorious.
