69novels Chapter 379
Chapter 379
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“”Sir, please have mercy on me, I haven’t eaten for several days, please give me some alms!”
On the street leading to Wall Street, homeless people who were not seen at other times appeared at this time. They came in groups of three or five, blocking passing cars on the street and demanding cash from the passengers in the cars.
Vanelk sat in a limited edition Cadillac bulletproof car and looked out the window through the anti-peeping window.
He was not the only one targeted by these beggars, there were also several other cars on the street that were stopped by the beggars!
“”Go, go, go away, get out of the way, don’t block the road, or I’ll hit you to death!”
Two tall and strong bodyguards in black and sunglasses came out of the car at the back and pushed the beggar who was blocking their boss’s car.
Without Vanelk’s orders, the driver of the Cadillac quickly started the car and sped towards the company’s headquarters!
It’s not that Vanelk was hard-hearted and had no sympathy, but he knew very well that in this situation, once he stopped to give alms to one of the beggars, the beggars on the whole street or even the whole area might flock to him, and then he really couldn’t leave!
Under normal circumstances, if he met a poor beggar on the street, he might be kind enough to lend a helping hand.
But at this time, the risk of doing so was extremely high, and there was no help at all!
The nationwide panic had spread thoroughly, and there were incidents all over the country. A large number of unemployed people have appeared. Many people have lost their jobs, were liquidated by the bank and went bankrupt, and then were kicked out and became homeless on the streets!
In the United States, the fate of homeless people who have no jobs and no houses is very tragic. Once they go bankrupt and become homeless, they will basically be homeless for the rest of their lives. Unless they meet powerful nobles who help them, they cannot escape the fate of wandering.
This is not to say that these people are lazy and unwilling to work and earn money to support themselves.
It’s that they lost their houses and cars after bankruptcy and liquidation, which is equivalent to losing the foundation for a person to settle down.
In the United States, because public transportation is very bad, almost everyone needs to buy a car and drive to work.
And a fixed residence is a necessary condition for survival. If you don’t have a house or a car, it will be difficult. Find a job, but if you can’t find a job, you won’t have money to buy a car, and you won’t have money to pay the rent, so it’s impossible to have a job.
So, a vicious circle appears!
In the movie The Pursuit of Happyness, the Smiths almost experienced such a thing!
The only way to jump out of this vicious circle is to seek help from outside forces. Someone can provide you with a sum of money so that you can rent a house. After solving the problem of survival, you can rely on your own efforts to strive for a better life.
However, there are too few people willing to provide help, so once you become a homeless person, you will be a homeless person almost for the rest of your life!
Vanelk doesn’t have detailed information in his hands, and he doesn’t know how many people in Gotham City have gone bankrupt and become beggars, but the number should be quite a lot, otherwise, he wouldn’t have run all the way to Wall Street this time!
Vanelk The purpose of this trip was to negotiate the acquisition of Citibank!
At the beginning of the economic crisis, Citibank was encouraged by the government to take out a large amount of funds to try to save the market, but it lost everything!
This stupid behavior brought them great difficulties, because investors were extremely pessimistic about the future market, which led to the sell-off of Citibank’s stocks, and a large number of depositors wanted to withdraw their deposits from Citibank.
If there were only one or two users who wanted to withdraw money, with Citibank’s strong assets, they would definitely be able to get through this.
But the problem is that there are too many people coming to withdraw money.
So many people came together to withdraw money, which directly led to a run.
Everyone came to withdraw money, but no one came to deposit money.
As a result, Citibank did not have enough cash and could not take out so much money!
Citibank is not just a savings bank, they also do credit and investment business.
A large part of the money deposited by depositors in the bank was taken out by them for investment, and at this time, the money invested has not been recovered at all or cannot be recovered at all!
Since the money could not be recovered, there must be a gap in their funds. Therefore, the depositors clearly deposited money, but they could not withdraw it. In panic, they made trouble outside Citibank and demanded that Citibank repay their hard-earned money!
Seeing that more and more people were making trouble, the situation was out of control, and Citibank began to panic. The first thing they thought of was to seek help from the Eagle Sauce government, hoping that the Eagle Sauce government could directly provide them with a national loan so that they could safely get through this difficult time!
The reason given by Citibank was also very sufficient: they did not really not be able to pay back the money, but because a large amount of funds were used for investment, there was not enough liquidity on hand to deal with the situation of bank runs. As long as the government provided them with a sum of money for emergency, they would get through this wave of difficulties and get back the money they invested, and they could repay the country’s debt with interest!
This request is very reasonable and not an excessive request. After all, the state’s guarantee for big capitalists is something that Eagle Sauce has been doing for a long time.
However, this seemingly reasonable request of Citibank was rejected by the Eagle Sauce government.
The government’s reasons for rejecting them were even more sufficient: not to mention that you have no money, the government has no money either, and even if it wants to help, it can’t help you!
This statement by the Eagle Sauce government immediately panicked Citibank, and they began to panic and hurriedly sought help from their peers.
For a time, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and other major banks received Citibank’s letters of help.
However, all major banks are also facing the risk of bank runs at this time. The spread of market panic has made people feel uneasy about the money stored in the bank, so a large number of people ran to the bank overnight to line up, just to take out the money they stored in the bank.
The result of this is that bank runs between banks are common. Not to mention Citibank, almost none of the five major banks in Eagle Sauce are spared, and they are all facing huge difficulties of liquidity shortage!
Citibank can still grit its teeth and hold on at this time, and can also ask for help from others. Those small banks with smaller assets and poorer risk resistance will directly burst into thunder at the first time of the crisis! In just a few months, at least more than 2,000 banks in Eagle Sauce have closed down and gone bankrupt!
The funds stored by tens of millions of people in the bank disappeared overnight!
In this situation, everyone is thinking about self-protection. Who can have the energy to help Citibank?
Besides, the major banks are originally business competitors. This time, they encountered such a serious economic crisis and a large number of banks went bankrupt. Everyone knows that as long as they can survive hard, they can laugh to the end! Once the financial crisis is over, these surviving banks will inevitably become monopoly groups and make more profits in the future!
Therefore, let alone no money, even if the major banks have money, they are unwilling to help Citibank!
If there is that spare money, it is better to use it to protect yourself, or think about how to quickly take advantage of the crisis to harvest high-quality assets at a low price!
Seeing that everyone chose to protect themselves, Citibank was desperate!
Just when they were sitting and waiting to die, ready to accept bankruptcy mortgages, Goldman Sachs, which had been silent and did not express its position, stood up! Goldman Sachs stated that they have strong funds in their hands and can help Citibank through the difficulties, but their help is conditional!
They can acquire 51% of Citibank’s shares in one go based on the current stock price and complete their actual control over Citibank!
As soon as this proposal came out, several major financial groups and banks rushed to the scene in shock!
Citibank is the fifth largest bank in the United States. In 1925, its turnover exceeded 1.6 billion US dollars and its total assets exceeded 2 billion US dollars. Although Citibank’s assets depreciated by about 90% due to the economic crisis at this time, it would take at least several hundred million US dollars to acquire them!
If it was before the crisis broke out, no one doubted whether Goldman Sachs could come up with such a large sum of money. After all, the fact that the president of Goldman Sachs spent 100 million US dollars to buy an airship had already spread all over the world. Everyone knew that Goldman Sachs was a local tycoon, a super rich one!
However, in the case of an economic crisis, major banks were generally severely run on, and the remaining money in their hands might not even be tens of millions of US dollars. At this time, Goldman Sachs could still complete the acquisition of hundreds of millions of US dollars?