The Industrial Giant Reborn - Chapter 658

c648 return night

Soros is a figure who can make many countries change their minds.

As early as 1969, Soros established the Quantum Fund. At that time, he was just a little-known figure on Wall Street. Before, he was just working for others. He was one of those people who left a stable career to start a business. People abound on Wall Street.

By 1973, he discovered that the performance of American weapons in the Middle East war was very poor, so he concluded that the same was true in the United States, so he made a big gamble and bought a large number of arms company stocks, thereby making tens of millions of dollars in profits. By 1980 , his fund rose by more than 103%, becoming the one with the highest yield on Wall Street. In 1985, he relied on accurate analysis to predict the possibility of the “Plaza Accord”, so he borrowed heavily to go long on the yen and the mark. , and shorted the U.S. dollar at the same time. After the “Plaza Accord”, he made a one-time profit of 150 million U.S. dollars and became famous on Wall Street. In this year, he appeared in the newspaper and became one of the 100 most famous celebrities on Wall Street.

If that’s the case, then at best, Soros’s name is only relatively famous in Wall Street or the financial industry. His peak was in 1992, which has something to do with the British Empire.

In fact, after World War II, the British Empire has declined. Everyone knows this, but the British Empire itself does not agree. Even if it does not have real strength, it still has to maintain its face, such as the dispute with Argentina over the Falklands. In fact, if it weren’t for the help of the United States, Great Britain would have lost long ago. And after winning, the entire United Kingdom seems to think that it is still the same Britain 100 years ago.

For a strong country, apart from its military, the most important thing is its economy. Only when the economy is strong can a country be strong. The British economy is actually not very good, but the declining aristocracy has to pretend to be a bad person outside even if they eat porridge and steamed buns at home. Come like this.

The UK’s choice is naturally the strong value of its currency, the pound. Although the value of the currency exchange rate has no direct relationship with the economy, it can always maintain its first place. That is always some fame and prestige. Therefore, the pound has maintained its position for hundreds of years in modern times. The high value of the currency is almost 1:1.6 against the US dollar.

But a currency with a high exchange rate will only cause greater harm when its economy is not doing well, especially when the U.S. dollar depreciates against mainstream currencies and European currencies fluctuate for various reasons, all the pressure is on the British pound and the British The manufacturing industry has almost collapsed due to the high value of the pound. However, the British Empire’s centuries-old colonial heritage is still very strong. No one knows when it will collapse. Everyone is waiting for this day. No one knows when it will be. Not even the British Prime Minister himself knows.

However, Soros speculated through various economic data that in the second half of 1992, the British government must not be able to hold on, so he borrowed sterling from the international market to short-sell, and at the same time went long the German mark. In the end, Soros won Even if the British government uses nearly 25 billion US dollars in foreign exchange reserves, it cannot maintain the high exchange rate of its pound.

In this process, Soros made a net profit of US$1 billion in one night, and also made US$1 billion in other currencies. From then on, he became famous all over the world. During this battle, Soros alone sold more than US$10 billion in pounds. .

In addition to the Asian financial crisis that people in the mainland later knew, in fact, in 1994, Soros also attacked the Mexican peso and the currencies of some countries in South America. The wealth was wiped out by financial robbers headed by Soros.

It is true that Soros was able to succeed. He himself was actually just a member of the process of attacking the national currency. The reason why he was able to succeed was actually because of the general trend, especially his huge reputation, which made his funds go everywhere. A large amount of international hot money has followed suit, creating a huge attack power. In the face of international hot money, the foreign exchange reserves of most countries are vulnerable.

In the original history, although the Hong Kong government at that time had the mainland behind it, no one had a sure idea whether it could defeat international hot money before success. This was a war without gunpowder. Therefore, Chen Zhiwen needed to be there before Raise as many dollars as you can.

However, these are not actually the big ones. The real big ones are naturally the stocks of many high-tech companies in his hands. However, the Internet bubble has not yet appeared and will not reach its peak until 2000. Even if he considers exiting early, You still need to wait a few years. If you calculate the time, it may be about the same as the Asian financial crisis threatening Hong Kong. Even if the time is wrong, you can convert these stocks into US dollars through financial means.

After arranging things in the United States, Chen Zhiwen returned to Hong Kong. At this time, Hong Kong had been classified as a developed region because its per capita GDP or income had reached the threshold of developed countries.

The most fundamental reason for this is not to win a large number of technology industries like Japan and South Korea, but real estate.

Since 1990, the Hong Kong real estate market has entered a new round of growth. Especially in this life, the existence of Chen Zhiwen has strengthened the entire Hong Kong economy. Even if a large number of industrial jobs have been lost, the beauty has now become a global One of the most powerful electronics companies, Galaxy Trading has become one of the largest trading companies in the world, Watsons has become one of the largest supermarkets in Asia, Red Bull has become one of the largest beverage companies in the world, and Hutchison Whampoa has also become a multinational company. Large-scale infrastructure consortium in various fields.

These companies are all headquartered in Hong Kong, which will inevitably recruit a large number of people. The number of these people combined is more than the number of industrial employees driven by Midea Red Bull more than ten years ago, and the average income is even higher. Coupled with the large amount of business activities, capital flows, etc. derived from this, Hong Kong’s GDP is much stronger than in its original history.

All achievements are ultimately converted into numbers in real estate and the stock market through the invisible means of finance. The latter is okay, it will not affect you if you don’t play, but the former is the foundation of everyone’s life. The skyrocketing housing prices have become an unbearable burden for many people. Over the years, there have even been some small-scale demonstrations.

However, how could the real estate consortiums, which had already made a lot of money from high housing prices, give up? As a result, a rare scene in the world occurred in Hong Kong. In order to suppress overheated housing prices, the Hong Kong government raised the bank’s benchmark interest rate. At the same time, Legislation requires a down payment of more than 30% to buy a house. This is a normal method and can limit the entry of large amounts of financial funds into the real estate market.

But the real estate giants are not happy. They don’t want house prices to fall, not to mention that when the down payment requires more than 30%, many people will not be able to come up with the down payment. The most important thing is that for a large number of people speculating on real estate, the cost will increase sharply. As a result, the giants of real estate companies immediately established financial lending companies to lend money to those who wanted to buy or speculate on houses, openly confronting HSBC and the Hong Kong government.

This also aroused the anger of the British Hong Kong government. Although they had only been managing Hong Kong for a few years, they were still very annoyed to be ignored by the businessmen below. So, the two sides began to fight again in various aspects, even among the media. , everyone started to make a fuss.

As the largest capital presence in Hong Kong, Chen Zhiwen is naturally someone that both parties hope to win over. However, Chen Zhiwen did not intervene in this matter.

In fact, from Chen Zhiwen’s point of view, although he does not have a great impression of the British Hong Kong government, they still did the right thing in this matter, even if they were forced by public opinion.

When housing prices in a place are too high, the government should use policies to suppress housing prices, which is what any government should do, but the group of real estate capitalists actually openly resisted.

If these people were all dragged out and hung on a street lamp, they would never wrongly accuse anyone.

Of course Chen Zhiwen will not help them, but there is nothing Chen Zhiwen can do about the Hong Kong government. This is going against the general trend. Although a few big capitalists are secretly causing trouble, they have now tied up the interests of half of the people in Hong Kong and millions of people. He who owns a house is unbeatable.

It is said that the house price is too high and you cannot afford it, but once you buy it, you will immediately want the house price to rise several times more. This is the mentality of everyone, unless you still want to continue buying a house.

There is no point in fighting against this general trend, and there is no way to fight against it. This time they are the attackers and the Hong Kong government is the defender. If Chen Zhiwen ends the game at this time, it will be difficult to achieve any results. The best chance is to wait until after 98, when Housing prices in Hong Kong plummeted when the Hong Kong government launched the 85,000 plan.

However, when the tumor is too large, no matter what method is used to treat it, there will inevitably be heavy losses. According to Chen Zhiwen’s plan, those who will suffer excessive losses will naturally be those who take over at the highest position.

Therefore, when the Hong Kong government, banks and real estate were fighting fiercely, Chen Zhiwen only publicly called on everyone to calm down and think carefully. The value of housing in Hong Kong is not worth US$10,000 per square foot. With this money, you can go to Shenhai City next door. Bought a super big villa. That’s all he can do. Whether he listens or not depends on his own choice.

The root cause of Hong Kong’s real estate chaos is the influx of a large amount of hot money and the somewhat out-of-control management of the local government before the British Hong Kong government left. This has also created a small city that can actually cultivate several world-class real estate tycoons.

Of course, in this process, as a time traveler, Chen Zhiwen ate the biggest cake, but he still did not touch residential properties, only shopping malls and office buildings. Anyway, if he did the latter well, he would be able to eat a lot.

From 1985 to 1997, Hong Kong’s housing prices were bound to increase significantly. The essential reason was that Hong Kong served as the bridgehead for the entire mainland market to open up. When the mainland’s economy took off, Hong Kong’s economy would inevitably develop faster.

Only when cities in the mainland are free to trade with foreign countries and when mainland ports can meet their own needs will Hong Kong’s role disappear and the myth of wealth be shattered.

In fact, if the mainland government had not taken special care of it and handed over many things that it can do to Hong Kong, Hong Kong’s economy would have completely collapsed from high altitude after 2000.

As one of them, Chen Zhiwen will not stop this kind of thing, and he can’t stop it. He can just let nature take its course.

Time soon arrived in 1997, on the evening of June 30th.

Amid the solemn national anthem, the five-star red flag slowly rose, marking the end of more than a century of British colonial rule over Hong Kong.

Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, disappeared silently in his decline. It was not that he was gone, but that the media no longer paid attention to him. Instead, he was naturally the first chief executive of the new Hong Kong government.

In such a conference, elite figures from all walks of life in Hong Kong will naturally be invited. As the most successful entrepreneur in Hong Kong’s business community, Chen Zhiwen is naturally invited. However, at this venue, he has no suitors to steal the limelight.

The first is because this is not a place where any businessman should be in the limelight. The second is that he has passed the age of wanting to be in the limelight. The third is that although Hong Kong has returned to the motherland, there are still many malicious international media. The reporter deliberately asked a lot of tricky questions. Although everyone present can be said to be an elite, the reporter who came may also be the same top elite reporter. If he accidentally said the wrong thing, he would be punished on a large scale. Hyped up.

The swearing-in ceremony of the new chief executive ended in the early morning. This may be the first time that Chen Zhiwen has stayed up so late in his many years of health care.

After taking the oath of office, Chief Executive Dong shook hands with the guests one by one. When he came to Chen Zhiwen, Chief Executive Dong said: “Sheng Chen, it’s been a long time no see. You have really lived in seclusion over the past few years.”

“For me now, family is the most important thing.” Chen Zhiwen said with a smile.

In fact, as early as a few years ago, Hong Kong’s wealthy families knew that this person was very likely to serve as the leader of the new Hong Kong government. In addition, Chen Zhiwen and the Dong family also had business cooperation. The two of them had long been involved in the relationship. There has been contact, but it is not very deep. In fact, it is not necessary for Chen Zhiwen. For him, it is enough to maintain a normal relationship.

“Family is of course important, but Chen Sheng, you are now the largest entrepreneur in Hong Kong. More than 100,000 people in Hong Kong work for you. The entire Hong Kong economy depends on you. I still think that after I join the company, together we will Cooperation will make Hong Kong a better place,” Chief Executive Dong said with a smile.

“Okay, I hope we can run Hong Kong better than before.” Chen Zhiwen nodded and said.

In fact, he is not easy to explain many things clearly. For example, in the future, he wants to launch an 85,000 policy to lower housing prices in Hong Kong, but he will encounter unimaginable resistance. The economic development of the entire Southeast Asia in the past ten years has also produced changes. A huge bubble. At this moment, a large amount of international hot money, led by Soros, is preparing for war.

PS: This book is almost finished. (End of chapter)