The unparalleled talent of the country started from Harbin Institute of Technology

In New York City, on a street near Wall Street in Manhattan, on the 78th floor of a super skyscraper, in an office in front of floor-to-ceiling windows, someone is playing a high-altitude game.

If someone opens the door to this office, they will be greeted by a strong smell of seafood.

Referring to the later movie "The Wolf of Wall Street," the protagonist, Jordan Belfort, once played a high-altitude game with his wife in front of the floor-to-ceiling window of a high-rise building.

Ding Ding!

Just as the two were having a great time, a specially made Huachen mobile phone on the expensive Taiping carpet suddenly rang.

Huachen Mobile offers models for the average consumer, as well as co-branded models with brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Lamborghini, and Hermes, each priced at over $50,000.

There are even more expensive phones, made of alloys, gold and other metals, with extremely luxurious appearances and top-notch internal technology, resulting in performance that far surpasses the latest phones on the market.

These custom-made phones are made to order, and a single phone can cost over a million dollars.

Therefore, what is being sold in these types of phones is not the phone itself, but rather its value and technical services.

Taiping Carpets may sound ordinary, but they are actually custom-made.

Taiping Carpets originates from China and is a high-end luxury handmade carpet brand under the Want Want Group. When Wang Duoyu asked Wang Jianchao to invest in embroidery, brocade and other handicrafts, as well as luxury goods such as Huizhou ink, gilding, filigree inlay and hammered lacquer in several regions of China, he also established the carpet brand.

Even luxury brands like Taiping Carpets are not considered luxury goods in China; they are merely considered ordinary high-end brands.

Because Huizhou ink, gilded metalwork, filigree inlay, and Nanjing brocade are the true Chinese luxury goods.

However, Taiping Carpets' operation and promotion have been very successful. It is currently the Hermès of the global carpet industry and is loved and sought after by the world's wealthy.

A single Taiping rug can cost over one million RMB, and some custom-made pieces can cost over ten million RMB.

Taiping carpets use natural materials such as wool, silk, cashmere, and metal threads. They require 35 processes and over seven years of training to produce, and each carpet is a unique piece.

Judging from the custom-made Huachen mobile phone and Taiping carpet, the owner of this office is indeed extremely luxurious.

"Gleason, the phone!"

The woman, with her curvaceous figure and prominent breasts and buttocks, grabbed Gleason's mischievous hand and rolled her eyes as she spoke.

Gleason, a burly, hairy white man, roughly slapped the woman's hand away and pushed her down into his executive chair.

"Never mind that, let's continue our game."

"Gleason, someone is looking for you. This is the third call."

"Damn it, who's messing up my good time?"

Gleeson angrily picked up his phone, and his face completely changed when he saw the caller ID.

He quickly answered the phone, and sure enough, his father's angry roar came from the other end:
"Gleason, you bastard! I don't care what you're doing, you have to be in the family meeting room within half an hour, or I'll make you regret it!"

“Father, I understand. I’ll be home right away,” Gleason said hastily.

Before he even hung up the phone, he immediately went to pick up the clothes on the ground. These suits were expensive custom-made clothes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Whether it was the materials, the style, or the fit and comfort, they far surpassed ordinary clothes.

When wealthy people choose clothes, they pay attention to both style and comfort.

In any case, the wealthy want both face and substance.

Yet Gleason carelessly tossed away such an expensive item, showing no appreciation whatsoever.

It was at this moment that he urgently needed to leave the office, which is why he went to pick up his clothes.

The woman's expression had already changed drastically, and she came over naked to help Gleason put on his clothes.

After leaving the skyscraper, Gleason finally made it back to their family meeting room within half an hour, where it was already full of people.

The Morgan family, spanning over a century, has more than 500 members in the main branch alone, not even considering the collateral branches.

But only six people were truly qualified to sit in the conference room, and Gleeson was one of them.

However, the real power in the family was held by his uncle Clayton, while his father Hendry was the second-ranking member of the family.

In other words, the current head of the family is his uncle Clayton, but a small family meeting is usually held when there are important or urgent matters.

It was clear that this was an emergency, as the meeting was convened very suddenly.

After Gleeson took his seat, Clayton began to explain the situation, and Hendry and the others listened and thought at the same time.

Lehman Brothers' stock price has now plummeted to an all-time low; even describing it as halved is considered a relatively optimistic scenario.

In the US stock market, there are countless sell orders for the company's stock, but not a single buy order.

For more than a week now, the company's trading volume has been zero, and no one is buying its stock at this time.

Affected by Lehman Brothers, the stock prices of companies such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Morgan Stanley, which were suffering from the subprime mortgage crisis, all plummeted.

Although the stock price decline was not as severe as that of Lehman Brothers, it still exposed many problems, and ordinary investors had lost confidence in investment banks such as Morgan Stanley.

It's worth noting that Freddie Mac had previously held a press conference, claiming that its financial situation was sound.

However, the vote of no confidence has already been cast by retail investors, and Lehman Brothers' zero trading volume for more than a week speaks volumes.

Right now, the most important thing for the Morgan family, including Gleason, Hendry, and Clayton, is whether or not they can save Morgan Stanley.

If we want to save this company, should we acquire it directly or borrow money to help it recover?

"Please feel free to speak your mind and share any opinions or thoughts you may have. Today, let's speak freely and without any taboos!"

That's what Clayton said, but in reality, he certainly couldn't say everything he thought.

Although everyone sitting here is one of our own, what's the reality?

Everyone has their own agenda. Growing up in such a large family, they are all ambitious and influenced by their surroundings.

After all, their family represents one of the richest families in the world, and there are very few families in the world richer than them.

"Uncle, it was the Raptor Fund that made the acquisition offer to Morgan Stanley, right?"

Gleeson was the first to speak, and after Clayton nodded, he continued:

“I’ve heard about this, but I don’t think they have that kind of capability. Although I’ve also heard that Raptor Fund’s annual profits are very high, this company is not a publicly listed company, and we don’t know its specific revenue and profits.” Raptor Fund was established in 1988 and has risen rapidly since then, shocking the entire Wall Street.

But over the years, the Raptor Fund has become very low-profile, and the outside world's understanding of it is limited to legend.

This resulted in young people like Gleason having limited understanding of the company to written descriptions, which were likely written internally by the Raptor Fund and intended to mislead outsiders about their company.

However, no matter how powerful the Raptor Fund is, Morgan Stanley is the second largest investment bank in the United States, with Goldman Sachs ranking first.

However, Goldman Sachs cheated; they have many Jewish families working together behind the scenes, and they had been rising rapidly for a long time.

Most importantly, Goldman Sachs was behind the rapid boom in the US real estate market after the turn of the millennium, driving the issuance and trading of mortgage-backed securities and investing huge sums of money.

This is why Goldman Sachs' profits have been so staggering over the years, leading to its rapid rise to become the number one investment bank in the United States.

On the contrary, Morgan Stanley, a giant with a history of more than 100 years, was forced to take second place.

In fact, Maple Capital, ranked third, is not far behind.

However, Maple Capital is not a publicly listed company, which results in very limited public awareness of it.

This ranking is based on a comprehensive assessment of information from the media and other sources, and is not the most impartial ranking.

Therefore, Maple Tree Capital directly acquired Bear Stearns.

Morgan Stanley, the second-largest investment bank in the United States, had approximately one trillion US dollars in assets before 2008, which were divided into four core categories.

First, there are securities and trading assets such as stocks, bonds, and derivatives; second, there are cash and cash equivalents, totaling approximately US$130 billion.

Third, it holds a large amount of domestic fund assets in China, mainly through Morgan Stanley Huaxin Fund, a domestic public fund joint venture. Fourth, it manages client assets through Morgan Stanley's investment management division, amounting to approximately two trillion US dollars.

The non-core assets are in three aspects. First, they received a $90 billion investment from Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, acquiring a 21% stake.

Secondly, it received $100 billion in bailout funds from the U.S. Treasury Department’s TARP program. This money is repayable, but without any interest.

Third, it obtained emergency loans of up to $1040 billion from the Federal Reserve, the highest amount among all financial institutions.

Even Maple Tree Capital doesn't have such an emergency loan limit, and Goldman Sachs only has a limit of $500 billion.

However, the financial companies under the Want Want Group have very healthy cash flow and do not need the so-called emergency loans from the Federal Reserve at all.

However, the above only refers to assets, especially the first category of core assets, which originally had a value of several hundred billion dollars. However, due to the subprime crisis, these assets shrank rapidly.

Moreover, it's not just a matter of shrinking value; these core assets, such as bonds, have also suffered severe losses due to numerous defaults, making them almost impossible to sell as bad assets.

In summary, this means that core assets have become liabilities, leading to insolvency!
In the original timeline, Morgan Stanley became insolvent due to its large amount of non-performing assets. In September 2008, it applied to become a bank-controlled industrial and commercial bank, subjecting its assets to stricter supervision by the Federal Reserve. However, this also provided it with emergency financing channels, allowing it to successfully weather the crisis.

Otherwise, Morgan Stanley would have gone bankrupt like Lehman Brothers.

Gleeson's words made Hendry blush.

"You bastard, are you a pig?"

Hendry said angrily:

"Is this all you know about the Raptor Fund? Don't you know that this company makes over $30 billion in profits every year? Do you really think it poses no threat?"

"And do you even know what the situation is with Morgan Stanley now? You actually think that the Raptor Fund can't acquire Morgan Stanley?"

What a piece of trash!

Logically speaking, someone like Gleason shouldn't be so useless.

But that's the truth. He really is a bit of a loser, especially now. All he can think about is the word "Fake," and the alluring woman sitting in his office chair.

Gleeson didn't even bother to think about the situation at Raptor Fund and Morgan Stanley.

“Impossible!!!” Gleeson shouted.

He thought it was impossible, but Hendry and the others didn't want him to speak and told him to shut up.

Clayton and his group of five continued their discussion, while Gleason flipped through the documents, growing increasingly terrified with each reading.

How can JPMorgan Chase win against such an opponent?
Inside the villa on the lakeside island of Harbin Institute of Technology.

Wang Yifei is on leave at home. To be precise, she just finished her recent training mission and was given half a day off. She has to go back to the astronaut training center to continue training early tomorrow morning.

In the living room, she chatted with her family, mainly concerned about her younger sister Bai Doufu's college entrance examination results.

"Congratulations, little sister, on becoming the top scorer in the college entrance examination in Bingcheng City!"

"Sis, I didn't get the top score in the province, boohoo!"

White tofu ranks first in the province, but it's a tie for first place, not the real number one.

In other words, she wasn't actually the top scorer.

To be fair, her college entrance exam score was also very high, over 700 points.

Heilongjiang Province sets its own entrance exam questions and does not participate in the national exam, so the difficulty of the exam is still very high.

Thanks to Wang Duoyu, Harbin has become the most populous and economically developed city in inland China, which has also made Heilongjiang's economy rank first in the country, and its population has exceeded 100 million.

In the original timeline, people from all directions—east, west, south, north, and center—made their fortune in Guangdong.

In this era, Harbin has become the city with the highest net population inflow in the country, attracting a large number of people to settle here every year, even though it is the northernmost city in the country and winter lasts for half a year.

Therefore, the difficulty level of the college entrance examination papers in Heilongjiang is quite high.

Especially with Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) located in Harbin, a global center for mathematics, the Heilongjiang college entrance examination mathematics paper is notoriously difficult every year.

Bai Doufu wasn't the only top scorer in the college entrance exam; rather, they tied for first place, which was something no one expected.

Even Wang Duoyu became interested in another top scorer in the college entrance examination.

Wang Yifei comforted her sister for a couple of minutes, and then they started talking about the subprime mortgage crisis.

The subprime mortgage crisis has been the most talked-about topic in the Wang family lately. (End of Chapter)