A $50 million margin call? I'll short Wall Street.

Wednesday, November 2008, 3.

383 Madison Avenue, Manhattan, Bear Stearns Headquarters Building.

It was 7:45 a.m. In the trading hall of the Global Clearing and Liquidity Management Center, urgent system alarms blared incessantly, like the frantic beeping of an electrocardiogram monitor beside a dying patient in an ICU.

"The Massachusetts Pension Plan Investment Board has issued a full redemption order for $3.2 million, demanding immediate liquidation!"

A liquidator stared at the screen, his voice trembling with extreme tension.

The supervisor standing behind him turned pale.

$3.2 million was originally just a drop in the ocean for Bear Stearns, which claimed to have $180 billion in cash reserves.

But what's fatal isn't the amount of money, but the name behind it.

In the circles of Wall Street institutional investors, Harriman is like a canary in a mine. He's the most conservative, the least likely to leave his post—a true "old clock." If even he didn't hesitate to press the emergency withdrawal button, it means this ship isn't just taking on water, it's breaking apart!

This $3.2 million redemption toppled the first domino.

The chain reaction was more violent than a tsunami.

It was exactly 8:00 AM. News of Harriman's withdrawal of investment had already spread within Wall Street's institutional circles.

At 8:15, a large London-based hedge fund called, demanding the immediate withdrawal of $12 billion in cash and unrestricted collateral from Bear Stearns' prime brokerage account.

At 8:30 AM, two municipal retirement funds in California followed suit, demanding a total of $850 million in redemptions.

At 9:00 AM sharp, the trading desks of Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley officially began rejecting business calls from Bear Stearns, mimicking Goldman Sachs' "isolation" strategy from the previous day.

In this battlefield without gunfire, "liquidity" is life. And now, several of Bear Stearns' major arteries have been simultaneously severed. An $180 billion cash pool is draining away at a rate of billions per hour!

This is how investment banks die—a bank run. No court judgment is needed, no bankruptcy reorganization is needed; as long as confidence collapses, an 85-year-old financial empire can be drained dry in just a few hours.

……

At 10:00 AM, half an hour after the US stock market opened.

Goldman Sachs, 43rd floor, Vice President's office.

Richard Kleiman stared intently at the Bloomberg terminal, his shirt collar soaked with cold sweat, clinging tightly to his neck.

On the screen, Bear Stearns' opening price gapped down and then plummeted like a kite with a broken string.

$58.00……$54.30……$51.20……

Each jump in the numbers felt like a heavy hammer blow to Richard's heart.

The put option he had initially ridiculed as "worthless paper" with a strike price of $25 began to see its theoretical value explode exponentially as the price of the underlying asset plummeted. The unrealized losses on his department's books were climbing at a frantic pace that sent chills down his spine.

"Damn it... Where's the Federal Reserve? Where are the big institutions? Why isn't anyone stepping in to support us?!"

Richard clutched his hair with both hands and muttered to himself.

Just then, his personal cell phone, which was on the table, began to vibrate violently like a death knell.

Caller ID: Jason Rodriguez (Bear Stearns).

Richard swallowed hard and pressed the answer button with trembling hands.

"Hey, Jay..."

"Richard! What the hell have you done?!"

As soon as the call connected, Jason's almost hysterical roar exploded from the speaker, making Richard's eardrums ache.

"Jason, calm down, listen to me..."

"Calm down?! How am I supposed to calm down?!"

Jason's voice was filled with despair and extreme anger at being betrayed.

"What did you promise me last Friday? Didn't you say you'd appeased Harriman?! He just siphoned off 320 million this morning! This isn't just about money; his escape triggered a stampede across the entire organization! We've already had nearly 5 billion in liquidity withdrawn this morning!"

Richard's head buzzed, as if he had been hit by a heavy punch.

"That's impossible..." he retorted instinctively, "I clearly gave him a guarantee..."

"Shut up! You liar!"

Jason abruptly interrupted him, his voice trembling with anger:

"Do you think I don't know what Goldman Sachs has done?! Yesterday afternoon, your clearing desk directly rejected our credit replacement! You're practically announcing to the entire Wall Street that we're already dead!"

Richard, you Goldman Sachs guys are stabbing us in the back under the table, cutting off our funding, while you, as the VP, are sending emails to Harriman to tell him not to run away! You're just using us and those pension funds as human shields!

Richard felt as if he had fallen into an ice cave, as if all the blood in his body had been drained in an instant.

He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

"Now you're all right, Richard."

Jason let out a chilling laugh on the other end of the phone, a laugh more grating than a cry.

"Harriman not only withdrew all his investment, but he also went on a rampage in the institution's private circles! He claims to have irrefutable written evidence that you, on behalf of Goldman Sachs, provided false guarantees! He has already hired lawyers and is preparing to take that damned email directly to the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission)!"

"boom--"

If the stock price drop just now only made Richard feel fear, then Jason's last words were a death sentence for him.

Harriman did not delete the email as scrap paper.

Harriman turned that email into evidence in court!

"Jason... listen to me... it's not what you think..."

Richard's lips trembled uncontrollably as he tried to grasp at the last straw, "That email...that email was just my personal judgment..."

"Go explain your judgment to the federal judge, Richard."

Jason's voice suddenly became extremely hollow and weary, like that of a prisoner who had already received a death sentence:

"Bear Stearns is finished. I'm finished too. You're not going to live either."

"Beep—beep—beep—"

The call was disconnected.

The office was deathly silent.

The only sounds were the hum of the computer's main unit fan and the constantly flashing red declining numbers on the Bloomberg terminal.

Richard sat blankly in the chair, his phone slipping from his sweaty hand and falling with a "thud" onto the thick Persian carpet.

His proud Wall Street elite logic, his meticulously constructed fortress of lies, was crushed like a paper toy in the face of absolute panic and cold reality.

He was driven into a dark, narrow, and dead-end alley by the organization he worked for and the lies he told out of greed.

The front desk is Lu Ze's ever-growing black hole of options losses.

Behind him lies an impending fraud investigation by the SEC and at least twenty years in federal prison.

Richard slowly raised his head and looked out the floor-to-ceiling window.

The sky over Manhattan was overcast, with low-hanging clouds.

There are still nine days until March 21, the expiration date of the options he considers a "free lunch".