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

Washington, D.C., 20th Street Northwest, Constitution Avenue.

The Federal Reserve headquarters building.

This Italian Renaissance-style building, constructed in 1937, appears solemn and silent in Washington, D.C. at night.

The lights on the building's exterior illuminated the tall columns clearly, making them appear as a tangible embodiment of some ancient power.

Most of the lights in the building were already off.

But in a corner office on the second floor of the main building, the light was still on.

Ben Bernanke sat at his desk.

He was fifty-four years old, wore metal-framed glasses, had a neat gray beard, and was slightly bald.

His face showed a weariness unique to scholars—not physical fatigue, but the deep-seated mental exhaustion accumulated from constantly navigating between numbers and reality.

On the table in front of him were three documents.

The first report is today's closing report for the crude oil market.

More than one hundred and thirty US dollars.

This figure was $90 four months ago.

Bernanke put on his glasses, read the report from beginning to end, then turned it over and placed it face down on the table.

He didn't need to look at it a second time. He could already recite every line of numbers from memory.

The second document was an internal forecasting memo issued to him by the Department of Labor.

According to preliminary statistics on non-farm payroll data to be released this Thursday, the unemployment rate in May may have jumped from 4.9% to 5.5%.

5.5%.

Non-farm payrolls have been declining for five consecutive months.

This means that the US real economy is heading into recession at a rate that exceeds the predictions of most economic models.

The third document is an internal report from the Federal Reserve analyzing inflationary pressures.

The CPI rose 4.2% year-on-year, while the PPI (Producer Price Index) rose 7.2% year-on-year.

Energy prices rose by nearly 17% year-on-year.

Bernanke placed the three documents together and stared at them for a long time.

His mind began to do something he had never done on the podiums at Princeton and MIT before—not to deduce, but to pray.

Pray that these numbers are wrong.

Pray that the Labor Department's internal forecasts are too pessimistic.

Let's hope that the surge in crude oil prices is just a short-lived liquidity shock and will automatically fall back next week.

But he knew those numbers couldn't be wrong.

He is a scholar who studies the Great Depression. He has spent nearly thirty years of his academic career studying how the disaster of 1929 occurred and how it was accelerated and deepened by wrong policy choices.

His conclusion was that the Federal Reserve made a fatal mistake in 1929: it persisted with a tight monetary policy when the economy had already begun to collapse, fearing a resurgence of inflation, which turned a manageable financial crisis into an economic nightmare that lasted for a full decade.

Based on this research conclusion, in a speech in 2002, he uttered the boast that would later earn him the nickname "Helicopter Ben":

"The Federal Reserve can always stop deflation by printing money."

If necessary, we can drop the money down by helicopter.

When he said that, he believed he held the ultimate weapon against any economic crisis.

But that was in 2002.

At that time, he was not simultaneously facing a financial system in a state of chaos and a commodity market in a state of chaos.

He stood up and walked to the office window.

Outside the window, it was late at night in Washington, D.C.

The lawns on the National Mall appeared a dark green under the streetlights, and the silhouette of the Lincoln Memorial was faintly visible in the distance, reflected in the calm Constitution Pool.

The country's most important historical symbols are silent at this moment, as if waiting for something they have never seen before to arrive.

Bernanke placed his hand on the cold glass window.

In his mind, he calculated that unsolvable equation again.

If monetary easing continues and interest rates continue to be cut:

The dollar continued to depreciate, a large amount of hot money flowed into the commodity market, oil prices continued to rise, and the gasoline and food bills of ordinary American families continued to swell.

At gas stations, the situation is even worse for blue-collar workers who tremble as they watch the meter.

If easing stops, or even interest rates are raised:

Those leveraged machines that rely on low interest rates to operate—Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, and countless small and medium-sized banks—will face higher financing costs and head towards liquidity depletion more quickly.

The crack that has already appeared in the entire financial system will tear open even faster.

Two roads, two abysses.

He stood between the two abysses, with a steel wire that was getting narrower and narrower beneath his feet.

This was a situation that none of his economics textbooks had taught him how to handle.

He thought of his mentor, Friedman's "helicopter money" analogy, and the Fisher equation and Keynes's liquidity trap theory that he had cited countless times in class.

Those theories, at this moment, felt like a sophisticated set of tools that had been repeatedly verified in the laboratory. But when he actually stood in front of reality, he found that the laboratory equipment and the real furnace were not the same thing.

"We cannot let 1929 repeat itself."

This is his deepest promise to himself, and the reason he sat in this chair.

But he also knew that if he went too far in trying to prevent a repeat of 1929, he might inadvertently ignite another stagflation like the one in the 1970s.

He didn't know which was worse.

There are no completely identical precedents in history.

He turned around and sat back down in his chair.

He picked up a pen and opened the blank notebook in front of him.

He began to write on it.

It is not a policy memorandum, nor is it a report to Congress.

These were just fragments of thoughts, some truths he couldn't tell anyone, judgments he only dared to confront in the dead of night.

He wrote for about twenty minutes, then stopped and stared at the page for a long time.

Then he closed the notebook and locked it in the drawer.

He knew he had to speak out.

Can't wait any longer.

If we remain silent, the market will fill this vacuum in its own way—through more panic, more speculation, more rising oil prices, and a faster rate of bleeding from the financial system.

He needs to give this market an anchor before it loses its sense of direction.

Even if this anchor point comes at a political cost to him.

He picked up the internal phone and dialed the number of the head of public relations.

On the other end of the phone was a voice that had clearly been startled awake.

"President……?"

"Make the arrangements."

Bernanke’s voice was calm, as was the case with all his public statements, precisely controlled at a neutral frequency, devoid of much emotion.

"I need to give a public speech this week on forward guidance regarding inflation and monetary policy."

He paused.

"The wording must be clearer than ever before."

The public relations director paused for half a second: "...You mean, we need to clearly state our possible stance on interest rate hikes?"

"What I mean is," Bernanke said, looking out the window at the silent Washington nightscape.

"Let the market know that the Federal Reserve has not lost its way."

"Understood, Chairman. I'll make the arrangements first thing tomorrow morning."

"Thank you."

He hung up the phone.

The office fell silent once more.

He took off his glasses, gently pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, closed his eyes, and allowed his brain to rest completely for about thirty seconds in that brief darkness.

Then he put his glasses back on, picked up the crude oil closing report, turned a page, and began to look at the analysis appendix on the back.

Outside the building, the Washington night remained silent.

The lawns of the National Mall, under the streetlights, quietly awaited the dawn.