Chapter 51: Bubble Collapse (4)

Sunday, January 14, 1990.

I held a small party to celebrate the historic collapse of the Japanese bubble.

“Hehe, it’s nice to make a lot of money. We can have parties like this, right? Nanny?”

My nanny, who doesn’t know what I’m doing, looked at me with worried eyes. If it weren’t for my nanny, I might still be living at Daeha Securities.

Raking in money in the Japanese stock market crash, and reinvesting it in Eastern Europe… There’s still a lot to do.

“Miss, I’ve been so worried these days. You’re not doing anything strange, are you?”

“No! I worked completely legally?”

Yes, yes.

First of all, the short selling I did is completely legal. Well, I used a few tricks…

The way Sihyeon is looking at me is somewhat impure.

“Sihyeon, do you want some cake too?”

“…No, thank you. You always scold me for gaining weight whenever I eat something, but only at times like this… tsk.”

Lee Sihyeon, who reluctantly took a bite of the cake, looked at the end of the fork with a regretful expression.

-Nom nom.-

I deliciously ate all the remaining cake in front of her eyes and smiled brightly.

“Ahaha, our Sihyeon. You’ll be thirty soon, right?”

-Grind.-

A sound of grinding teeth was heard.

“I’m still in my twenties…”

“Hey, it’s okay. Who doesn’t age?”

My nanny, who turned thirty last year, smiled and comforted Lee Sihyeon, but it had the opposite effect.

“…I haven’t even been in a relationship yet. I really don’t want to get old.”

“Don’t worry! I’ll develop anti-aging technology for you later.”

“Huh, thank you for saying that.”

Well, I’m kind of serious.

The secret to hiding immortality is very simple. It’s to let everyone else enjoy the blessing of immortality.

I’ll wait until around 2050, and if it’s still not possible, I’ll just put them in cryosleep. Still, wouldn’t anti-aging technology be developed in 100 years?

“Miss, are you going to work tomorrow too?”

My nanny hugged me from behind with a worried look and stroked my hair. I felt a tingling sensation for a moment.

‘Ugh…?’

Really, I don’t allow anyone to touch my body except for my nanny.

Feeling sorry, I smiled awkwardly and affirmed.

“Yes… I guess so. I’ve been playing with Ryeon a lot these days! Really, really.”

Of course, it’s a lie. How much time do I have to play with Ma Ryeon, when I’m busy working?

Sigh, I have to do my vacation homework too.

What should I write in my diary?

[Today, I shorted the Japanese Nikkei index. It was really fun.]

…This doesn’t seem right.

***

Anyway, after enjoying the sharp plunge in early January, I went to Daeha Securities today and received a report on the situation.

“Alpha Fund, how much did we make approximately?”

“It’s about $50 million now.”

About 50 billion won…

Good.

“First, liquidate the positions in derivatives appropriately, and since the Nikkei index will continue to fall, take a long-term short position.”

I don’t know when it will fall. However, I roughly know until when it will fall.

Therefore, I didn’t leverage heavily or invest in derivatives, but planned to make profits only by short selling appropriately.

In other words, it’s a periodic cash machine.

“…What about the comprehensive financial companies? They are quite dissatisfied.”

Ah, that.

“First, open up the options. It will be a headache if they complain to Jinseok unlce. Hmm… we can’t do anything about the losses now, but let’s give them a chance to cut their losses.”

Originally, Daeha Securities is my territory, so Yu Jinseok can’t interfere… but still, I need to make Alpha Fund attract as little attention as possible.

“Then, isn’t it different from the original purpose?”

“It’s okay. When you actually give them a choice, they will generally choose the one that takes risks.”

In the first place, the losses that the comprehensive financial companies have suffered now are not the losses they originally suffered. It’s the debt that Japanese securities companies have to repay later.

But if they get rid of it early, it will remain as a loss for the comprehensive financial companies. The comprehensive financial companies do not think at all that the huge Japanese securities companies will go bankrupt, so the only risk they have to bear is holding the debt for a long time.

Ha Jusung slowly nodded as if he understood.

“I see. It’s hard to think that the Japanese stock market will fall further. You’re really cruel, Miss.”

“Well… isn’t that how this world works?”

I didn’t deny it.

The reason why the comprehensive financial companies maintain the contract even though they know it’s a loss is because I cleverly made it into such a contract.

That contract is a bomb. It’s not even a bomb that explodes now, it’s a bomb that gets bigger day by day and can be detonated when I want.

In fact, all my money is tied up in the US and Europe, so this was the only way to control Korean financial companies.

Anyway.

“The important thing is Eastern Europe. Sihyeon, did they say they made a company in West Germany?”

I turned my head and asked Sihyeon, who has been working hard these days. As I was working in Korea, Japan, the US, and Europe, Sihyeon became very busy.

“Ah, yes. I received a call a while ago. They seem to be busy preparing to eat up the companies that are being privatized in Poland.”

“Bring in M&A experts under the name of Alpha Fund and make them work in West Germany… recruit front office guys from Daeha Investment Bank and make them work. It’s still difficult to put them into actual practice, but they’ll learn something if they roll around together.”

In the case of East Germany, because it was unified with West Germany, West German companies preferentially ate up East German companies.

So, in order to eat up East German companies, I had to create a company in West Germany first. Thanks to that, no matter how much money I earn, it keeps flowing out.

It was fortunate that I had made connections in advance while breaking down the Berlin Wall.

I constantly rolled my head and prepared for the next schedule.

“Then, next…”

“-So. If you launder money through a Swiss bank, you get a pretty decent company.”

“Where did you learn that?”

“Huh? I learned it while traveling in Europe last time. At that time, I also recruited a citizen who can open an account at a Swiss bank.”

“…Was that it? I thought you just wanted to see the Alps…”

“Don’t you know I don’t like doing physical work? I don’t like working originally.”

Anyway, Sihyeon is still lacking a lot. That’s why I like her.

I smiled and stroked Sihyeon’s hair. It was soft and smelled good.

“In that sense, I should rest a little now. Because all the preparations are finished.”

….

Now all the preparations were finished.

All that was left was to wait for time.

I made a money-making machine with difficulty, so all I have to do is turn it on and wait.

***

After that.

Japan’s recession was rapid and long-lasting.

What does that mean? You can get a rough idea by looking at the news.

[Bank of Japan… raises benchmark interest rate to 4.00%]

[The Ministry of Finance implements total loan restrictions on real estate. New loans are completely prohibited…]

[Japan’s benchmark interest rate rises again, 4.50%]

[Overvalued Tokyo land prices plummet by nearly 30%… Investors’ fears spread]

If the economy deteriorated rapidly, the bottom would be visible to some extent in the near future, but the Japanese economy was so bubbly that it was almost skydiving.

Without a parachute.

“It’s really absurd when I look at it now.”

I let out an empty laugh as I looked at the piled up newspapers. The Japanese government was doing something completely foolish.

If the US had followed the policies that the Japanese government is doing now in the subprime mortgage crisis – the 2008 global economic crisis, it might have been not a great recession or a small depression, but just the collapse of the US.

‘It’s meaningless. The US learned from Japan.’

Well, it can’t be helped. Japan was walking the path that no one had ever walked before.

What is the biggest condition for winning the Nobel Prize in Economics? It’s not economic achievements or outstanding genius, it’s just long-lived genes.

…Macroeconomics has ‘Earth’ as its laboratory, so to verify my theory, I had to wait for a country to verify my theory instead.

And Japan was now kindly conducting various economic experiments with its own national fate.

‘Aha! If a large company is about to go bankrupt with all kinds of debt, we have to save it by force so that other companies don’t go bankrupt!’

In order to know that, a large company must first go bankrupt.

‘There is a need to forcibly hold down the economy sometimes to prevent excessive bubble formation!’

This fact, which will become common sense in the future, was written with the blood of countless people. For reference, this is actually a very difficult problem, so the US had to review it without being able to get its act together even after seeing its neighbor Japan get hit.

So, around the time when half of 1990 had passed…

Alpha Fund projected an average annual return of 47%. Even though half of the money earned in Japan was diverted to Eastern Europe, it was that much.

And I earned $150 million.

It’s not the operating assets or the profits of Alpha Fund, but the ‘cash’ I earned is $150 million.

The actual money earned by Alpha Fund is $2 billion, of which half was diverted to Eastern Europe, leaving $1 billion.

According to the 2-20 contract of the hedge fund, Ha Youngil received $200 million, and according to the contract made at the beginning, he transferred three-quarters of it to me.

It was a little less, but it was okay. The Japanese bubble burst will last a long time, unlike Black Monday.