80 Fifth Avenue, New York, United States, Pacific Rail Corporation Building Conference Room.↑,.

Dozens of giant companies from the United States, Britain, France, the Netherlands and other countries gathered together to wait to join Pacific Railway Corporation.

"What's going on? Why haven't that guy Rand come yet?" A man from London, England couldn't help asking. He came to New York on behalf of the Bots Consortium, the largest railway company in the UK, to sign an investment agreement with Pacific Railways.

"Is this guy Rand trying to repent, right?" Another representative from the French Hillpus consortium also showed concern, fearing that Rand would change his mind.

There are also many people who are also worried. They are representatives of the chaebols from the United States and around the world. Today they are here to negotiate the purchase of ancient tickets from the Pacific Railway Company.

This Pacific Railway Company is very young. It has only been established for four years, but it has unparalleled financial resources and means. At the beginning of its establishment, it invested $50 million to obtain the 50,000-kilometer railway construction contract issued by the US Department of Transportation.

The contract looks tempting because the US government enacted a cash subsidy law in the bill, which also stipulates that no matter which company, the land on both sides of the tracks will be developed and utilized. The Pacific Railroad, which participated in the construction of the railway, can obtain a total of more than 5.261 billion acres of land from the government, which is larger than the area of ​​the entire Texas; it was also allowed to issue ancient tickets with a face value of US$100, with a number of as many as 1 million. Since the government bonds, land grants and subsidies obtained by the company are issued based on the mileage of the railway construction, the government did not specify where the railway was built. This is a loophole, which made the Pacific Railroad Company take advantage of loopholes and can get subsidies as long as it is built in the United States.

But this was an unprecedented huge investment after all. At that time, all the consortiums in the United States were not optimistic about the 50,000-kilometer railway plan issued by the US government, so they all retained it. They did not dare to pay high prices during bidding. Only this newly registered Pacific Railway Company was very strong and decisive. They directly won the contract.

At that time, most consortiums in the United States sneered at it and mocked Rand, the president of Pacific Railroad, who was a fool, and 50 million dollars would definitely be wasted. Because they knew that Pacific Railroad had almost dozens of employees and had no business dealings with any American rail company. God knows how they convinced U.S. Department of Transportation officials that they had the ability to build 50,000 kilometers of railways.

However, just as these consortiums laughed at Rand and were waiting to see him joke, they suddenly discovered that consortiums from European powers such as Britain and France were investing in the United States, especially they all set their sights on the United States' railway industry and showed great interest.

Two years later, railway construction climaxes occurred in various parts of the United States. Huge capital from Europe entered the American railway market, especially the United Kingdom. There was overcapacity and the railway capital in the United Kingdom was saturated, so it poured capital into the American railway on a large scale. The American railway industry became hot. The million ancient tickets issued by the Pacific Railway Company quickly rose from a face value of 100 US dollars to 300 US dollars, and continued to rise.

The Pacific Railway Company's initial investment of 50 million US dollars, by issuing one million ancient railway tickets, the market value increased from 100 million US dollars to 300 million US dollars, with a net profit of 250 million US dollars. If the US government's fiscal subsidies are included, a subsidy of 1,000 US dollars per kilometer of 50,000 kilometers is 50 million US dollars. If the 5.261 billion acres of land on both sides of the railway track are included, these are the land given to the Pacific Railway Company by the US government for free. All of this adds to the Pacific Railway Company's market value has reached 500 million US dollars, a total of ten times the original investment of 50 million US dollars.

From then on, no one in major consortiums in the United States laughed at Rand, the president of Pacific Railway. They all praised Rand as a shrewd investor and regretted not getting a share of the pie and began to negotiate cooperation with Pacific Railway.

Rand neither rejected these American consortiums nor agreed to cooperate. The two sides had been negotiating. Later, business giants from Britain, France, the Netherlands and other countries also joined the negotiations, which kept the negotiations going for several years until now.

Today, major consortiums received a notice from Pacific Railway Company that the final transaction price of ancient tickets will be finalized today. Therefore, representatives of major consortiums brought contracts and prepared to sign a contract with Pacific Railway Company.

At this moment, Rand, the president of Pacific Railway, is talking to several men from the Eastern Front in his office.

What is strange is that in Rand's office, one of the men with Eastern Hour sat in Rand's president's seat, while Rand stood opposite the desk, respectfully, as if Rand was not the boss, but the Eastern Hour was the boss.

In fact, this is true. The man from Dongfang Kong was named Yung Wing, the president of Danfu University and the economic advisor to Li Weiguo. Rand in front of Yung Wing was Yung Wing's classmate and good friend at Yung Wing.

This matter starts four years ago. After Li Weiguo launched the May Fourth Patriotic Money-Training Money Operation, he cheated out a huge sum of 57 million pounds from the Bank of England. Such a huge sum of 57 million was difficult to digest for a while. Li Weiguo is not a person who is scattered. He has always liked to use power to make money and make money with money. The huge sum of 57 million pounds cannot be kept in the vault without waiting for hair to grow mold.

Li Weiguo wanted to invest, including investing in European powers such as the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, and the United States. Yung Wing stayed in the United States for a long time and was an American official. At that time, there was only Yung Wing who could trust and capable subordinates by Li Weiguo. Therefore, Li Weiguo found Yung Wing and discussed a large-scale investment in the United States.

However, Li Weiguo knew that the Civil War would break out in the United States soon, and investors would suffer heavy losses, so Li Weiguo only wanted to invest in some industries in the United States in the short term and withdraw capital after making some money. At that time, Yung Wing was very visionary. Hearing Li Weiguo say that to build roads before getting rich and to build railways around Shanghai, Yung Wing suggested to Li Weiguo to invest in American railways.

Originally, Li Weiguo wanted to invest in the US steel industry. When he heard Yung Wing talk about the prospects of the US railway market, he suddenly realized that the first full outbreak of the capitalist world economic crisis was on the eve of the American Civil War. Because the point of the first economic crisis was not the strongest Britain at that time but in the United States, it was beyond the expectations of people all over the world, so it was easy to remember it.

This time, the US economic crisis swept across the Western world, and the fuse was the American Railway. Because the British realized the huge profits of railway transportation, they fled to build railways, which caused British capital to pour into the US railway market on a large scale, leading to a vicious expansion of the US railway. In the end, the ancient American railway tickets collapsed, thus affecting the entire European and American world.

After thinking of this, Li Weiguo immediately had an idea. He ordered Yung Wing to go to the United States and find a way to open a company to invest in the railway industry. Because Li Weiguo's relationship with the US government was hostile, Yung Wing did not dare to open a company as a Chinese, so he could only find reliable American friends. In the end, Yung Wing found his classmate and friend Rand, and opened the Pacific Railway Company in the name of Rand.

Li Weiguo was worried about Rand. He secretly sent agent of SHIELD to control Rand and his family, and at the same time, he secretly invested in the Pacific Railway Company with a huge sum of money to set off a railway construction climax in the United States, make a big profit and cheat the Americans again.

In this way, with Rand's appearance, the Pacific Railway Company won a 50,000-kilometer railway project through "Hui Lu" US government lawmakers and officials of the Department of Transportation for $50 million, and obtained the right to issue an ancient ticket of $100 million, and then began to hype up the ancient tickets and raise the stock price.

As Li Weiguo predicted, the British began to invest in the American Railway on a large scale, causing the price of ancient tickets of the Pacific Railway Company to soar from one hundred dollars to more than three hundred dollars, setting off a frenzy of American railways.

By 1857, Li Weiguo knew that the ancient American railway tickets were about to rise to the highest point and the economic crisis was about to break out. However, Li Weiguo did not know the specific time, so he could only send Yung Wing to the United States again at the beginning of the year, selling all the stocks of the entire Pacific Railway Company and shipping them back in gold.

In the office, Rand heard that Yung Wing wanted to sell all the shares and even transfer the railway contract to other American companies. He didn't understand and was persuading him.

"Mr. Rong, please believe me, I will definitely strengthen the Pacific Railway Company. It will become the largest railway company in the United States. We are not short of money, so there is no need to sell our stocks."

Yung Wing smiled and said, "Old classmate. I believe in your ability. Don't worry, this time we are just transferring strategic funds. We are preparing to invest in the US steel industry, which requires a large amount of funds. As long as we take over US steel and operate it, we can in turn subsidize the Pacific Railway. You should know that our rails are controlled by the US Morgan Consortium. They monopolize steel, which is very unfavorable to us. In order not to be threatened by them, we must make sacrifices!"

Yung Wing would not tell Rand the truth, but he found a good excuse to make Rand believe it. Only when Rand believes it is true can he better deceive the representatives of various consortiums waiting in the conference room.

However, Rand still asked: "I know steel is closely related to our railways. Without steel, there will be no railways, but I am unwilling to accept it. Our stocks are still rising. It will be difficult to buy them after selling them to these large consortiums!"

Yung Wing is humble and doesn't want to show his identity as a big boss to suppress his old classmates, so he has been persuading Rand in a very tactful way.

However, when Yung Wing discovered that Rand was stubborn, in order not to affect Li Weiguo's "trap to the great cause of the United States", he had to make a tough statement.

"Okay, I've decided. You can go to the conference room right now and sell all our stocks to them. Remember to act like you have to force me and tell them that we were forced by the Morgan consortium."

Rand was shocked when he saw Yung Wing's face sinking, so he left the office weakly and headed to the conference room.

When he arrived at the conference room, Rand sold the shares of Pacific Railway to consortiums in various countries according to Yung Wing's instructions, but he was still very attentive and forced the price of $310 per share to $320.

Representatives of major consortiums knew that the rails needed by Pacific Railway were threatened by the Morgan consortium and imported from overseas were also controlled by major consortiums that were working. They forced to sell their stocks, so they did not doubt Rand and did not want to drag it down any longer. So they happily agreed and signed a stock transfer agreement.

Soon, Pacific Railway Company sold all one million shares and was purchased by more than 30 large consortiums from both the United States and abroad, with a total amount of US$320 million.

At the same time, Rand also transferred the Pacific Railway contract to the Morgan Consortium for US$170 million, including several railways built by the Pacific Railway in the past four years and some land developed along the railway. As for the US government, the Morgan Consortium said that they would settle it and would not punish the Pacific Railway.

In the end, Pacific Railway received $490 million in funds, removing the $50 million in mortgage that it had given to the U.S. government four years ago, Pacific Railway recovered $440 million, and took out the cost of several sections of railways built in the United States over the past four years, making a net profit of $425 million.

This is a huge sum of money. Fortunately, more than 30 consortiums from Britain, France, the United States, and the Netherlands are all large consortiums, so they transferred all their funds to the Pacific Railway Company account in less than a month.

Three months later, Yung Wing exchanged all $400 million of funds into hard currency. He originally wanted to exchange them all for gold, but it almost caused the collapse of the New York gold market. With the intervention of Bank of America, Yung Wing only exchanged 100 million US dollars in gold in order not to attract the US government's advice, and the remaining 300 million US dollars were exchanged for silver and secretly transported back to Shanghai.

As for the remaining $25 million, Yung Wing purchased two copper mine factories in San Francisco, on the east coast of the Pacific Ocean in accordance with Li Weiguo's order. The Pacific Railway Company resold it to the Rockefeller Consortium, and the funds obtained were still run by Rand, responsible for processing and transporting the US copper mines to Shanghai. Because as Li Weiguo expanded the Shanghai army's forces and manufactured Weiguo-style rifles and 9mm standard rifles bullets on a large scale, the demand for copper increased significantly, so we have to look for cheap copper resources overseas.

On June 3, 1857, just when Yung Wing left the United States with huge amounts of gold and silver, the stocks of the United States Railway collapsed. It turned out that the stocks of the Pacific Railway suddenly plummeted from $320 to $50, causing the American Morgan, Rockefeller, the British Bots Consortium, the French Hills Consortium, and dozens of other European and American consortiums to suffer heavy losses, and soon swept the entire American economy and affected various capitalist countries in Europe and the United States.

This is the world's first large-scale capitalist world economic crisis in history.

Li Weiguo welcomed Yung Wing on the dock and received the news immediately. He was extremely happy.

What a joy to make the Americans so badly!

However, while Li Weiguo was happy, he was also a little worried that in order to transfer the economic crisis, the great powers of Europe and the United States would inevitably plunder colonies around the world on a large scale.
Chapter completed!