In fact, as Li Mubai expected, the California consortium united a number of consortia in the southern United States, relying on their connections in the past at the top of the federal hierarchy to exert great influence on the parliamentary commission of inquiry.

No matter how powerful Rockefeller and Morgan are, they can't cover the sky within the federation with one hand, there are fights where there are people, and there are many interest groups they offend on weekdays.

Now coupled with such a large piece of fat in front of Citi's First Consortium, if you don't take the opportunity to eat a few bites of the cake delivered to your door, I'm afraid that these capitalists will also give themselves a few slaps in the face in their dreams. As for retaliation after the fact? When the time comes, Rockefeller, who has lost the financial lifeline of Citigroup First Group, will definitely weaken. Morgan alone may not be able to compete with small and medium-sized consortia across the country.

"Sean, for the sake of everyone who used to work together very happily, help us."

In a lavish office in the New York State office building, Congressman Sean Connery smiled at the white man in front of him, who was the head of a Rockefeller-owned lobbying firm named White Williams, who would not have been easily dispatched in the past.

As a key figure in the two major factions of the Republican Party in the Federation, Sean Connery has a pivotal position in the Senate, and can even influence the decision-making of many members of the Republican Party to a certain extent, which is why White Williams will personally lobby him.

Seeing that Sean Connelly was unmoved, Williams was anxious, and after making sure that no one was monitoring, he handed over a check from the table without a trace, and said almost pleadingly, "For God's sake, please don't refuse us." ”

Sean Connery glanced down, his face finally changing a little, "White, you have to know that this matter is very troublesome, and it is no longer for me to influence the outcome of the matter. ”

That being said, the action of collecting cheques is not slow at all, after all, six zeros plus eight before the head is not a small amount, even as a parliamentarian, this is a huge amount of money.

Seeing that he was willing to accept the money, White Williams breathed a sigh of relief, "I know, but this matter is very important to our consortium, and I also specially brought you the sincere greetings of Mr. Walker and Mr. Clark. ”

Sean nodded, but was a little puzzled, "Although the matter is urgent, you shouldn't come to me in person, and." ”

As he spoke, he tapped the check with his hand, "It doesn't seem to be in order." ”

In the United States, there are tens of thousands of specialized lobbying firms, and the number of lobbyists registered through the official is as high as millions, and almost every American can become a lobbyist, as long as they have the ability to influence some important official figures, they can make a reasonable and legal profit, but the premise is that they must pay taxes, and once they evade taxes, it will be serious.

In this case, no matter what the federal authorities decide, it is the product of compromise after several groups have exerted influence through different means. A congressman who has extensive influence in both houses can even obtain millions to tens of millions of dollars in profits a year through this kind of lobbying.

This is the United States, a reasonable and legitimate country of corruption. Rich people enjoy everything!

However, on the surface, parliamentarians will never accept money directly, especially this kind of direct hand-to-face cheque is rare. Generally, corporate capitalists who want to promote a certain legislation, or obtain a certain order or preferential policy from the federal government, will first contact the cronies and staff around the congressman, and when a series of negotiations enter the substantive stage and finally obtain a final commitment, they will finally make the legislator reap legitimate profits through relatively uncontrollable financial means such as insider trading, or investment management.

That's why Sean Connery was a little puzzled, but the check for eight million dollars caught his attention all the time, so much so that after a while, he said straightforwardly, "Listen, Mr. White Williams!" The time has come when the Citigroup case must be resolved, and the entire Federal Parliament is very concerned about it, and more and more members of parliament cannot accept the current status quo of Citi; If you're trying to influence the investigation through me, I'm afraid you're going to disappoint. ”

"Of course, we know the gravity of the matter, but what we need now is time, and federal credit guarantees and rescues. Without that, I'm sure many of my old friends in the council wouldn't want to see this end. White Williams nodded, but at the same time, he didn't miss a single opportunity to lobby for Citigroup.

While Sean Connery was still in the excitement of reaping huge profits, White Williams hit the railroad while it was hot, "Sir, you know. Citigroup is a super financial company with hundreds of thousands of employees around the world, and it is, to a certain extent, almost a symbol of the benchmark for the American financial industry, if this company has a crisis, then the national financial industry will be hit hard. Especially at the time of the deepening of the subprime mortgage crisis, nearly 15,000 companies in the United States have gone bankrupt in just three months, and more and more factories are also on the verge of bankruptcy, most of which have business dealings with Citigroup. ”

"I know all of this, but this time you've gone too far!" Sean Connery used to be a good friend of Citigroup, and of course he knew some of Citigroup's recent situation very well, but what made him dissatisfied was, "Even if you have done something less glorious, you can't let so many handles be caught. ”

Of course, this indignant sentence is not necessarily to complain about Citi's self-inflicted suffering, perhaps to a greater extent, it is for the once three-thousandths of Citigroup's shares, which Sean originally regarded as a long-term meal ticket, but with the difficulties in Citi's operation, this part of the fixed income has gradually become a piece of waste paper.

White Williams has been dealing with him for so long, where do you not know his inner thoughts, hearing the words, he immediately spoke, "Sir, these are all groundless accusations and malicious smears by people with ulterior motives, you also know that in the past business, in order to expand the company's business scale and profitability, we offended many people, and now that the company has problems, they all come out to blame, trying to hinder our self-help behavior." Mr. Sean, you must understand that once Citigroup collapses in this storm, then the entire federal financial industry will inevitably collapse. ”

White Williams' words are by no means alarmist, but a serious issue that is happening, which is one of the reasons why after a series of scandals in Citigroup were exposed, the federal top management did not immediately suspend Citigroup from trading, and even entered the substantive punishment stage. Because Citigroup is implicated in too many factors, a continuous shock caused by a bad will also cause a huge crisis in the entire federal economy.

Not to mention anything else, just mentioning Citigroup's deposits and loan figures, can make people's scalp tingle, that is involving trillions of dollars of sky-high funds, once Citi collapses, then the associated companies are bound to enter the recovery, hundreds of thousands of natural person shareholders and investors, will inevitably lose all their money.

At that time, these bankrupt investors and enterprises that have fallen into the rupture of the capital chain will create a related interest group of millions of people, including the bosses, management, and employees of the enterprises. No one can ignore the close ties between the consortium and the national economy, and if a consortium-controlled giant company is in trouble, the federal priority will be to bail it out immediately, not let it go bankrupt.

Nowhere is this more evident than after the decline of the GM Group. The federal government will never allow this to happen, and even if the company can no longer survive, the federal government will definitely use huge sums of money to rescue the company to delay the social and economic impact of the company's bankruptcy.

"I understand all of this, but your scandalous problems have caused the federal top brass to dare not come to the rescue, for fear of being attacked because of it, do you understand?" Sean Connery didn't dare to pack the ticket, but for the sake of the wonderful check, he decided to give it a try, after all, Citi is also very important to the United States, at least at this stage, Citi must not go bankrupt, otherwise the entire federal financial circle may be buried with it!

"That's great." A smile finally appeared on White Williams' frowning face......

"Now that it's almost time for a large-scale acquisition of Citigroup's shares, we have to fully integrate this financial company into our system before the federal government gets involved in Citi's affairs, preferably with absolute control, and make it completely our company!"

On the top floor of the headquarters building of the Central City Bank of Los Angeles, the California consortium and other high-level executives who rarely gathered together unanimously expressed their attitude to Li Mubai, who controlled the Bank of America, and knew the importance of a super financial group to the consortium, how could they not urgently want to bring Citi into their control.

You must know that the reason why Morgan suppressed Rockefeller in the United States for a long time, and even made Rockefeller pay hundreds of billions of dollars on the issue of the merger of Traveler and Citigroup, is because Morgan controls two financial institutions that are vital to the United States, and through Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, the Morgan consortium can create countless jobs from them every year and provide tens of billions of dollars in tax revenue for the federal government.

At the same time, the Morgan consortium, which owns two major super financial institutions, can also deal with various potential competitors through its financial institutions, and through a series of loans and interbank lending and runs, they completely take half of Wall Street into their hands. If it weren't for Morgan's attempt to control Citigroup, which aroused the unanimous opposition of other consortiums, I am afraid that Rockefeller would not have incorporated Citigroup First Group into his own system so easily, thus filling the gaps in the consortium's operation, slowly coming out of the trough and continuing to rank among the top three consortiums in the United States.

Now that they have an opportunity to weaken Rockefeller and even catch up with Morgan to become the largest consortium in the United States, these California consortium tycoons will certainly not let it go!

Li Mubai is also well aware of their plans for Citigroup, although he has owned a quarter of the company through a series of means, through the complementary advantages of his own companies, he may not be able to develop the company into the fourth largest bank in the United States in less than five years, but who would dislike that he has too many financial channels in his hands?

"Gentlemen, it is clear that things will not go so well, and a counterattack from Morgan and Rockefeller will come soon. I think we'd better come up with a solution before then. Rather than having a dispute over the interests that have not yet been obtained before the prey is dead. ”

Hearing Li Mubai say this, the people present immediately understood, but this is also the meaning of the topic, after all, for the layout of Rockefeller and Morgan, most of the time Li Mubai took action, and the vital intelligence information was also provided by him.

Although capitalists are essentially profit-seeking, after Li Mubai demonstrated his strong information-gathering ability and his own capital, no one will question Li Mubai's right to possess the spoils of war, but the details, such as the specific distribution plan of shares, still need to be discussed.

Li Mubai, who knew that this issue would be debated sooner or later, did not discuss it excessively, because the urgent thing to delay now was how to eliminate the threat of counterattack by the Rockefeller consortium, and he thought that the best way was to shut up the key people in it. It's best to use some means to bring some threats to the bigwigs who can call the shots, and make them shut up.

Thinking of this, he pushed the thick stack of documents in front of him to the center of the conference table, and said naturally, "In the intelligence gathering against Citi, we also happened to find something of interest, you can take a look, if there is no problem!" So let's make these things our winning formula. ”

The tycoons of the western and southern conglomerates were a little confused, but when they saw the information disclosed on the materials, they all changed their colors.

"How is that possible? Unless it is a defection of key cronies, how can this kind of top-secret information involving big people be disclosed? ”

"It seems that this wonder boy from the East still has a huge intelligence agency in his hands that is unimaginable to ordinary people, and their execution power has reached the point where they can threaten anyone here."

The tycoons all had ghosts in their hearts, but they also didn't dare to act rashly, because through this series of means, they finally saw the fact that Li Mubai turned his head to deal with them, which was obviously easy.