The autumn breeze is crisp, the maple leaves are gorgeous, and the coolness of the second half of 1929 has swept over the entire northern hemisphere.

At the last moment of the 20s, the people of the entire capital world were full of joy and expectation for the new decade that was about to begin; Looking back, they have every reason to be satisfied with their increasingly affluent life. Among them, the American people living on the North American continent are undoubtedly the happiest people. In the past eight years, the United States has achieved a rapid take-off in national economy and industrial output by means of technological innovation and a large number of domestic and foreign market expansions.

By June 1929, the United States accounted for nearly half of the world's total industrial production, and its gold reserves reached 60% of the world's total. Whether it is the British Empire, which once dominated the world, or Germany, which has just overtaken Britain in terms of gross national income and regained its second place in the world, it has been desperately surpassed by the United States in terms of macro industrial data. The whole of the United States is in an atmosphere of unprecedented prosperity, and consumer goods such as cars, refrigerators, radios, vacuum cleaners, and telephones have begun to enter thousands of households; Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States, who witnessed this prosperity during his tenure, proudly declared that the American people had reached a "state of happiness rarely seen in history." The new president, Herbert Hoover, who succeeded him in March 1929, was equally optimistic about the prospects, claiming that the United States was on the verge of eradicating poverty and that Marx's heresy could be thrown into the wastebasket.

However, behind this rapid development of prosperity, there is already a strong crisis brewing that could kill it. The most serious of these is the emergence of an unprecedentedly large false bubble in the stock market.

Since 1922, the U.S. stock market has been on a positive upward trend, but much of this has been a direct result of speculation rather than healthy investments. After the end of the European War, a large number of enterprises in the United States have amassed a lot of wealth; Due to the decline in external demand brought about by the end of the war, the capitalists did not use their money to expand the scale of production, but invested it in the stock futures market, and the "first blow of God" that blew up the stock bubble was immediately fired. The influx of money into stocks has led to a sharp rise in the stock market, which in turn has attracted more people to join it, and caused the false bubble in the stock to snowball. What is even more fatal is that the US government at this moment has taken completely laissez-faire measures against the domestic financial market, believing that a market economy without external intervention is the most ideal mode of production.

"If you want to make a fortune, go and speculate in stocks." In the late 20s, the phrase "go to the military" was shared by almost all Americans. Even the shoe-shiners on the streets of Manhattan have plunged into the frenzied whirlpool of the stock market, and it is easy to imagine how big a vacuum has been blown out of the soaring stock market in the United States. Except for a very small number of people who are uneasy and worried about the current stock situation and choose to withdraw from it, tens of millions of people are still intoxicated by it, believing that this prosperity will continue.

On October 24, 1929, the bubble that had been building up in the U.S. stock market for more than seven years finally burst at the tipping point because it was no longer able to expand. On the same day, the stock suddenly plummeted, and nearly 13 million shares were sold by the panicked crowd. Over the next few days, the decline in the stock continued to rise day by day, culminating in five days later, on the 29th, when the Dow Jones stock index plunged 22% that day, more than 16 million shares were sold, and desperate and hysterical cries echoed across Wall Street's trading floors. Countless banks, corporations, and individuals who have invested their wealth in the stock market can only watch their massive amount of money disappear in an instant!

In a luxury home in New York City, Henry Cole, founder and CEO of the Monbias Foundation, pale; Blonde and blue-eyed, with a vicissitudes on his face, he actually has another hidden true identity, that is, Walter, the younger brother of Rudolf, the owner of the German Brom-Forth shipyard. After 9 years of hard work, he is now a legendary financier who has attracted much attention on the entire Wall Street: anyone who invests in the Monbias Foundation can get a gratifying return of 8% to 10% every year, and even 12% when the stock market rises sharply, and has never broken his promise!

However, no one knew that Walter was using Ponzi's pyramid scheme to maintain the money chain, because his disguise was just too good. The legitimate investment channels and reasonable and stable returns have put American investors at ease, and they have not connected Walter to the swindler Ponzi who was in Boston ten years ago. But now, Walter's scam is no longer sustainable: because he also threw a huge amount of money into the stock market in order to maximize profits. After a week of stock market crashes, his stock market fortune has shrunk by half, and the rest of the money is simply no longer able to cope with the current situation.

"Are you leaving?" Walter looked at the "home" in front of him where he had lived for nearly 10 years, and whispered with some desolation and emotion in his heart. He had lived in a foreign world with another identity for so long that he had almost forgotten what his original nationality and identity were; If it weren't for the fact that he had to transfer his bleached dollars to overseas bag companies every ten months, and that he had a regular correspondence with his brother, Walter would have forgotten everything he had in Germany!

After a moment of silence, Walter's eyes flashed, and his whole temperament suddenly changed, and he was no longer as sentimental and indecisive as he was just now. He quickly entered his room, opened the secret door at the back of the closet with the key, and removed a large stack of pages bound in series of ropes from a safe. These are all personal financial bills made by him in the United States to carry out a pyramid scheme, which has become a thick mountain over the past 10 years. Soon, Walter fetched the brazier and burned the evidence of his fraud. Bright flames reflected in Walter's pupils, burning the papers to ashes and burning his disguised identity as Henry Cole.

Cleaning up the ashes, Walter immediately dialed the telephone number of the telegraph office and asked him to send him a telegram that he wanted to buy a limited-edition sedan that Ford had launched seven years earlier. After so much time together, the people at the New York Telegraph Office had already become old acquaintances with Walter, so the telegram was easily photographed. However, its ultimate receiver was not the manager of a car sales company, but a cargo ship moored at the docks east of New York.

In order to allow Walter to escape North America after the East Window incident, Rudolph had already registered the Brom Line several years ago, and more than a dozen merchant ships were responsible for the transportation of goods between North America and Germany. Each ship has a reliable crew member who has been given a special mission, and as soon as they receive this telegram from Walter, they will immediately take action and smuggle their target out of the ship in time. Perhaps intentionally, or perhaps by coincidence, a ship happened to be anchored in the harbor east of New York at this moment; Walter quickly got a response from the other party, asking him to start an evacuation operation immediately!

Walter took a deep breath and walked out of the house with the same calm look as usual; He had almost nothing on him, giving the impression that he was going out normally. As the taxi sped away, Walter was getting farther and farther away from his home, but there was no sadness or melancholy in his eyes, and determination and determination had already occupied every inch of his heart. Just go, without the slightest hesitation or stop. In fact, this is the reason why Walter has never been married during his ten years in the United States: if he really had a loving wife and children, he would never have been able to leave as quickly as he does today, and delay means danger and arrest!

From Walter's decision to leave to his meeting with the person he was connected to, it took less than three hours. Walter, dressed in a normal suit, mingled with the loading workers and boarded the merchant ship called the Sable; His new role in front of the crew is that of the company's cargo buyer in the United States, and he is taking a ride back home for vacation. When the cargo was loaded, the Sable slowly pulled anchor and set sail for Hamburg am Elbe; When it reached its target, Rudolph, who was the head of the land, was able to smuggle a man out of the ship without being noticed by the German customs officers.

Shortly after Walter's evacuation, the two leather relays in Brazil and Sweden, which he had used to transfer funds to Germany, were also retracted by Rudolf's telegraphic instructions. The two tentacles that were directly connected to Walter were controlled by Rudolph's henchmen, who also burned all the bills before leaving, leaving all traces into nothingness. Even if someone with a heart can find traces of their activities, in the absence of evidence, they can only keep the problem at the level of speculation.

At this point, the Brom family's pyramid scheme in North America came to an end. With the funding provided by Walter, Rudolf was able to merge many of his domestic competitors and significantly expand his business, becoming one of Germany's new industrial giants. This fund is the key driving force that allowed the Brom family to develop and take off in the difficult situation after the war!

(PS: Thank you very much for the 1w starting point coin reward of the book friend king+, who is still in the north at this time, and I suddenly felt rare warmth and relief in my heart)