After the short and warm birthday dinner, Rudolph, who was full of joy, also told Fang Yan about his brother Walter's adventures in the past six months.

At the beginning of August 1919, Walter set out for Austria; His new identity was a private in the army who had been demobilized from the Alpine front, and before that he had been a general clerk working in a town bank. He was given such an identity because the former Austro-Hungarian Empire had fallen apart, and the land was becoming unprecedentedly turbulent and chaotic in the frenzy of national self-determination, and the civil administration had been in a state of near paralysis since November 1918. In this case, falsifying a person's profile could not be simpler; Even if someone really investigates it in the future, Central Europe, which has undergone great changes that have changed the world, has already erased all the relevant clues, and it can be said that there is no proof of death, and this undoubtedly provides him with excellent cover.

In this way, Walter, who goes by the pseudonym Henry, stayed in Austria for nearly a month, and then bought a ticket from Pula to New York and left for North America. The lighthouse countries of this era were far from having the stricter immigration control measures of later generations, and a shoehorn of the Austrian krona, which had not yet been significantly devalued, into the hands of the United States immigration authorities, immediately allowed Walter to obtain a formal letter of permission to enter North America legally. When Walter landed in North America, he first set up a chain of money from North America to Germany based on a pre-planned plan. In this crucial operation, he and Rudolph on the other side of the ocean took a lot of work, and after more than three months of difficult planning, they developed two dark lines in Brazil and Sweden that Rudolph indirectly controlled. In order to achieve this, the Brom-Fox shipyard was squandered on all the money that had been transferred after the war, and even owed a large amount of debt to the bank. Hearing this, Fang Yan couldn't help but secretly speculate that when the difficulty and twists and turns of the matter became far beyond his previous expectations, Rudolph estimated that he had a love-hate relationship with him, the initiator who directly led to Walter's departure to North America, and even regretted his decision to invest in this action in the first place, right?

Sure enough, Rudolph, who was sitting in front of him, coughed lightly and said, "To tell you the truth, I regretted Walter's adventure in North America very much last winter. In order to be able to control a few foreign companies that can transfuse blood to the shipyard without anyone knowing, I have invested a lot of energy and financial resources, so that the operation of the shipyard has been seriously affected, and there is almost a risk that it will not be able to support it. If Walter's operation in North America fails, I will have to file a bankruptcy petition with the Weimar government, giving up all my shares in the shipyard to the government. Luckily, however, since the beginning of this year, all of this has paid off, and the shipyard has been able to recover from the brink of collapse. At that moment, he smiled at Fang Yan about the transfer situation in the past few months.

After all the preliminary preparations were in place, Walter finally began his revenge on the United States by replicating the pyramid scheme. The reason why he said that his operation was a copy is because the ancestor who created this pyramid scheme, the Italian Charles Pounds, is also carrying out his financial fraud in Boston, USA. He used a completely non-existent project as a signboard, promising to give investors a super generous reward of 50% within 45 days; Americans who are stupid and have a lot of money have flocked to him under this fatal attraction, and some even regard him as a god-sent god of wealth who "discovered money" like Columbus discovered the New World. In just half a year, nearly 20,000 Boston citizens participated in it, and the total amount involved exceeded $7 million; What is the concept of 7 million dollars in 1920, and if it is doubled, a 32,000-ton top-of-the-line battleship will be built for the Navy!

Although Pounds is the founder of this classic trick, he is still very naïve in the details: the return on investment he promises to the public is simply frightening, which is clearly not the quality of a full-fledged pyramid scheme. In contrast, Madoff, who later used the same principle to raise funds, was much more clever: his annual return of 8%~12% for investors was relatively high, but still within the range of reasonable interest rates that could be achieved. The benefits are clear. Pounds' scam lasted only one year before it went bankrupt, but Madoff's fund stood on Wall Street for eight years, raising a total of $50 billion. If it weren't for the financial crisis, which caused a large number of investors to ask for temporary withdrawals; Madoff's scam will continue to exist.

After synthesizing many historical experiences, what Fang Yan sold to Walter before his departure was undoubtedly the most mature method of trickling water and long-term flow. In addition to giving "investors" a reasonable rate of return that is not too high, Walter can also invest some of the money he raises in the stock market, thereby further expanding the wealth he has at his disposal in the current bull market. Since industrial demand in the post-war United States was much weaker than during the war, entrepreneurs and ordinary people, who had more or less profited from the European war, lost their investment; Under these circumstances, a large amount of idle money immediately poured into the stock market, which directly contributed to the wild rise of the US stock market throughout the 20s of the 20th century. Except in rare cases, entering the U.S. stock market during this period can be said to be a sure bet, and it is clear that this opportunity should not be missed.

Although Walter's fund did not have the shocking returns of Pounds, his previous lack of popularity has deepened investors' doubts about his creditworthiness; However, with an attractive income of 2~4 percentage points higher than conventional investment, it still attracts a considerable number of customers to invest their money in it. This new financial operation also kicked off. With the principal invested by subsequent investors, Walter easily paid the high interest rate promised to those who invested first; Under the appearance of these early crab eaters, people's credit worries about the Walter Fund have also been greatly reduced, and the initial skepticism has quickly turned into excitement and surprise. Driven by the desire to make a fortune, the Americans followed suit, and a flood of money poured into Walter's fund account, and the name "Henry Cole" began to spread in the local area, and it was known that investing money in his projects would pay off better than ordinary investments.

"In the past three months, I have received more than $200,000 in funding from Walter through two wedges in Brazil and Sweden. In the letter, he assured me that over time, his scam would attract more people to invest in it, thus providing us with more financial support. Rudolph spoke softly, with a look of joy on his face that could not be concealed, "Even the current rate of profitability is close to the level of the pre-war shipyard when it was fully operational, which is undoubtedly an extremely unbelievable achievement!" ”

Fang Yan smiled and said, "Then I will congratulate my father." With these infusions, our shipyard was able not only to survive in post-war Germany, but also to move further in the industry; After the signing of the Versailles Peace Agreement last year, not only our Brom-Foss, but also all other major shipyards in the country were frantically looted by the Entente bandits, and they are all in a state of semi-collapse on the verge of bankruptcy. Therefore, we will be able to bring these companies into the hands of the Brom family with a very small investment that is much lower than in the past, and it is not clear that we will become a second Krupp Group in time! ”

Rudolph glanced deeply at Fang Yan in front of him, and a little complicated look flashed in his gray-blue eyes; He nodded and said, "You're not bad at all. Walter's success in North America has far exceeded my initial expectations, and these funds could not be more important for the shipyard and family today. As a next step, I am going to acquire the shares of the two shipyards, Keele and Weser, and bring them under our name; If possible, Germania, which is controlled by Krupp, and Wilhelm, which belongs to the government, are also among my goals. Although they are stronger than Brom-Forss, their development is greatly troubled by the current poor domestic situation, and this is a great opportunity for me to carry out the merger of my peers. ”

Seeing Fang Yan's immature face full of joy, Rudolph seemed to suddenly think of something, he paused, and then said: "The current situation of the shipyard is already the most ideal situation in the past three years. But you, Jonas, should think about your future as well. I've heard from Phoenix, who takes care of you, that you spend most of your spare time in the library, and even go to the colleges and universities in the city to borrow some books on the navy, but is this? ”

The smile on Fang Yan's face narrowed slightly, and he nodded, "That's true." I found a lot of things in the school library that interested me, so I used to hang out a lot. Although this inevitably distracted me from my studies, I did not abandon my main business; Didn't Uncle Felix tell you everything about this? ”

Rudolph exhaled and said, "Since you are holding on to your dream now, I will not forcibly interfere. But when you grow up, I want you to be able to re-examine your future path. ”

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