Hong Kong variety show: The mastermind behind the scenes is emerging.

As this century-long stock market crash spread like wildfire across the world, the complete collapse of overseas markets, in turn, dealt a heavy blow to the already fragile US stock market.

Businesses collapsed en masse, and small and medium-sized banks went bankrupt one after another, triggering a chain reaction of massive collapses like dominoes throughout the financial system.

In fact, as early as the second day after the stock market crash, the newly appointed Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan quickly launched a series of extremely swift market rescue measures—significantly lowering the discount rate, injecting massive amounts of liquidity directly into the financial market, and using administrative power to strongly pressure major commercial banks not to withdraw loans.

This powerful stimulant did indeed have an immediate effect when it was first administered. On the 20th and 21st, the market rebounded strongly from its lows, and long-absent applause and cheers even echoed through the trading hall. Countless speculators, gripped by panic, thought that the worst nightmare was over.

However, once the weekend was over, the second dip came even more violently than the first. The panic was not suppressed by the market rescue policies; it was only temporarily silenced over the weekend, and it was all released when the market opened on Monday.

Wall Street, the stock exchange.

At 9:30 a.m., after the opening bell rang, the trading hall was still packed with people, but the atmosphere was completely different.

Last week, there were shouts, curses, and keyboard-slamming sounds; this week, only silence remains. Everyone sits in front of their terminals, fingers on the keyboards but not typing, just watching the numbers constantly changing on the screen.

10:12 AM.

A figure flipped off the edge of the rooftop of the fifteen-story securities building opposite the stock exchange.

"Bang!--"

A dull yet violent impact suddenly rang out in the middle of the street.

The next second, on Wall Street, a corpse dressed in a dark gray suit lay across the sidewalk to the left of the New York Stock Exchange's main entrance. His head had hit the edge of the granite steps, and blood seeping from his fractured skull slowly trickled down the cracks towards the drain.

One of his shoes flew off during the fall, but he was still wearing the other one. He was also wearing his wedding ring on the ring finger of his left hand, which was deformed by the impact and stuck on his knuckle.

A hot dog vendor peeked out and then looked down to continue flipping the sausages on the grill.

"Here we go again—how many is it today?"

"The thirteenth." The newsstand owner next to him glanced up, took off his reading glasses, wiped them with the corner of his clothes, and put them back on.

Those who narrowly escaped death last week have finally been completely crushed by the double-dip recession today.

After the market opened, many people walked out of the trading hall, took the elevator to the top floor, and pushed open the door to the rooftop.

They changed into their most presentable suits, opened the red wine and champagne they had been reluctant to drink, shared a drink with strangers, and then jumped off the cliff hand in hand.

The NYPD's emergency response team completed the scene in fifteen minutes—a white sheet was placed over the body, two people lifted him onto a stretcher and into an ambulance, and another person used a mop and bucket to clean the bloodstains off the steps.

The water in the bucket was changed twice. The first time it was red, the second time it was pink, and it only became clear on the third time.

The ambulance sounded a short siren and drove into the traffic on Broadway.

Not far away, a shoeshine man squatted on the sidewalk, dipped his brush into the shoe polish box, and continued to polish a middle-aged man's leather shoes.

"Sir, have you not worn these shoes in a long time? They don't look like they've been well maintained."

"...Yes, please give me another treatment." The middle-aged man's ankle trembled slightly, but his expression was calm, as if he had made up his mind.

Of course, the ruins of a stock market crash aren't just filled with bankrupt banks, collapsed companies, and losers jumping off rooftops. In other words, the ruins themselves are also building materials. When everyone in the market is blindly selling in panic, there will always be someone who bends down to pick up the good stuff that has been wrongly sold off.

……

Washington, D.C., the White House.

Bob Anderson sat outside Vice President George H.W. Bush's office, sipping a fine cup of Kopi Luwak.

As a security consultant for Golden Harvest, he earns a million-dollar annual salary to deal with the current situation—acting as an intermediary between Lu Chen and Washington.

After a while, the door opened. George H.W. Bush's secretary poked his head out and nodded to him.

Inside his office, George H.W. Bush stood by the window, his back to the door, holding a freshly printed report on the flow of funds. Outside, Pennsylvania Avenue stretched out, and fallen leaves were swept by the wind across the White House's iron fence.

“Bob, your Eastern friend has gone a bit too far,” George H.W. Bush turned and threw the report on the table. “Last weekend, he simultaneously liquidated his positions on three exchanges in Chicago, London, and Tokyo. Three hundred billion dollars is now sitting in offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. You have to understand the current situation in the US. People are jumping off exchanges every day, bank runs stretch from Wall Street to Third Avenue, and the Federal Reserve just announced a fifty-basis-point rate cut—at this time, the US has no shortage of bankruptcies and fleeing money.”

He sat down in the chair and tapped the red figures on the report on the table with his knuckles. "The Treasury estimates that if all this money flows out of the U.S. by the end of November, short-term dollar liquidity will dry up further. The credit market is already frozen, and withdrawing another $30 billion could trigger a second financial crisis. The White House won't allow that to happen. The president's meaning is clear: he can make money, but he can't take it away."

"Don't worry, Bush," Bob waved his hand and said gently, "Mr. Lu made it clear before he came that he fully understands the White House's position. In fact, he never intended to transfer the money out of the country. The money is still in the U.S. and untouched."

George H.W. Bush leaned back in his chair, the tension in his eyes easing slightly.

Bob continued, "Mr. Lu means that he doesn't intend to take the money with him. He has decided to take advantage of the current stock price lows to invest heavily in some high-quality companies that were wrongly punished in this stock market crash."

"for example?"

Bob took a list from his briefcase and placed it on the table. The list wasn't long, but every name was a symbol of American capitalism: Coca-Cola, IBM, General Electric.

George H.W. Bush picked up the list, looked down at it for a few seconds, and then suddenly laughed.

"That mysterious, damned Easterner," he put the list back on the table, flicking the edge of the paper with his finger, "he'd already planned this out, hadn't he?"

When asked this question, Bob simply smiled and shrugged.

However, Bush did not pursue the matter further, since his core objective was simply to keep this astronomical sum of money in the United States. What Lu Chen would use it to buy was secondary.

Moreover, from another perspective, Lu Chen's decision to spend billions of dollars to aggressively buy up blue-chip stocks at this critical juncture is actually a good thing for the White House and the Treasury Department—because he is doing something for the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department that they cannot do with interest rate cuts and capital injections: rebuilding market confidence.

"We have no objection to the list. Go back and tell Lu that as long as he guarantees that the money will be used to invest in the economy, the White House can even give him the greatest administrative convenience in the relevant review process." Bush put the list on the table and handed Bob Anderson a cigar.

"However—I hope that next time Lu makes any big moves, he can give me a heads-up beforehand. I don't want my pitiful pension to become worthless."

Bob took the cigar, stood up with a laugh, and said, "Haha, Bush, don't worry about it. I guarantee you'll never have to worry about your pension again."

……

Wall Street.

The closing bell had already rung, and the streetlights had just come on, casting a dim yellow light on the Stars and Stripes on the New York Stock Exchange building. The hot dog vendor was packing up, the shoeshine man was putting his shoe polish box into his toolbox, and the newsstand owner was bundling up the unsold evening papers and securing them with rubber bands.

The wind blew in from the direction of the Hudson River, scattering transaction documents and scraps of paper into the air. A puddle of water, not completely dry, remained on the steps leading to the exchange; a bucket sat beside it, and a mop leaned against the wall.

The lights in the building were still on, and through the floor-to-ceiling windows, one could vaguely see the backs of those still sorting out today's settlement slips. The pieces of meat on the street had been cleaned up, as if nothing had ever happened.

Tomorrow morning, some people will walk this street again, buy a cup of coffee, open the newspaper, and take a look at the market.

Some people will become rich overnight during periods of extreme turmoil, while others will lose everything.

Of course, there will still be people who will leap from the cold rooftop, landing on the same step in the same way.