Leon arrived at New York's JFK International Airport at about 10 o'clock Eastern time, and it was still busy, and everyone was in a hurry, not at all like Phoenix. Leon hailed a taxi in the parking lot and headed to Manhattan, where he had an appointment at eleven o'clock tonight.

Six years have passed since the 911 incident, and the Twin Towers are still empty, leaving the city scarred by the attack. But Leon knew that an even more terrible attack was coming, and after seven years of preparation, he had already overwhelmed the city with a large army.

The taxi was on Avenue 678, and the driver was a white driver with a beard on his face that looked like he hadn't taken care of it for a long time. However, his stereo played Taylor Swift's pop country single "Our Song", a lilting song that didn't match the driver himself. It's just that it seems that the driver likes this country diva who has just risen this year, and when the music starts, he shakes his head and chats with Leon.

Leon sat in the back seat, the darkness obscuring his face, so the driver didn't recognize it as the famous Iron Fist Coach, and he said to himself: "Her voice is amazing, I think of my daughter when I hear her songs, she likes to play guitar, she lives in the country on Long Island, and she loves country music." Hey, what music do you like? ”

The white uncle seemed to be a father who loved his daughter very much, and Leon replied, "Symphony." ”

"Oh yes, symphony, symphony! The stuff of the people in the city, listening to music, and dressing seriously, as if going to a funeral, hahaha! It's better to have country music, in the country, in a small bar, you can sing along. ”

Leon didn't refute anything, and echoed: "That's right, in the future, I will also go to the countryside to buy a villa to live in, with my daughter." ”

As soon as the house was mentioned, the taxi driver's tone changed, and he said in a persuasive tone: "Oh, now is not a good time to buy a house, you know, I just bought a house in Hempstead last year, 100% loan, this year I have mortgaged it to the bank, haha, because the price of the house has fallen, let me repay the loan to buy something of lower value?" No way! ”

Leon didn't speak, just nodded slightly, it seemed that the driver was also involved in this crisis, and he just gave up the house as most people do. This is undoubtedly a wise choice, because house prices have fallen, the value of the house has shrunk, and if they continue to repay the loan, they will lose money. Because in the United States, real estate loans enjoy non-recourse, that is, if you borrow 1 million from the bank to buy a house, and the house price falls and the property shrinks to 700,000, the lender can choose to directly let the bank take back the house and cut off the mortgage by himself, while the remaining 300,000 losses are borne by the bank itself, and cannot be recourse through the lender's other property.

This regulation makes many people willing to actively borrow money to buy a house, and also when housing prices fall, it pushes banks into the abyss, because the more housing prices fall, the weaker the market, and a large number of shrinking properties are hoarded in their hands, resulting in a large area of bad debts and cash flow problems in banks.

Of course, this was only the prelude to the unveiling of all the problems, Leon clenched his fists, and as the car sped away, the closer he got to Manhattan, the stronger he felt the smell of blood.

……………………

The car drove for almost 40 minutes, and the traffic on the road was good at night, and the taxi crossed the East River from the Midtown Tunnel in Queens and arrived in Manhattan, it was almost 11 p.m. But Manhattan doesn't look like it's any different from seven or eight o'clock, and it's still very lively. The car parked next to a German restaurant near the School of Visual Arts in New York, where Leon and Renren were located, and in the southeast section of Midtown Manhattan, where entertainment and eating places gathered, with restaurants from all over the world, movie theaters, and comedy clubs.

Leon paid the fare and went straight to the restaurant, or rather the beer hall, where there were a lot of people, and he made his way through the crowds, and it was now a good time for beer lovers to drink their mouths in a big way. Leon accidentally bumped into a big man who was holding a beer bottle and blowing it to someone, and the big man choked on the wine in his mouth without taking a breath, and Leon hurriedly waved his hand and said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." ”

But this big man was obviously a little drunk, and several friends around him laughed when they saw his embarrassment, so that he couldn't get off the stage, so the big man had to take Leon out of anger, scolding and scolding in his mouth, and wanted to pull Leon's collar, but Leon easily dodged and turned around to leave. But Dahan still didn't give up, stepped forward and pressed Leon's shoulder, Leon turned around to block Dahan's hand, and then suddenly hit a straight punch out, and the bottleneck of the beer bottle in Dahan's hand was blown away with a "bang"!

There was still one bottle left in the big man's hand, he stood there in a daze, feeling that his brain was much clearer, if that punch hit his nose, it was estimated that it would fly out directly like that bottleneck. Leon looked at the big man, still said "sorry" in his mouth, turned around and walked away, this time no one dared to stop him.

Of course, the whole beer hall was still lively, and Leon's punch only sobered up one person and did not affect the carnival of others. He went up to the second floor, entered the reserved box, and finally met one of the financial brokers he had contacted earlier, an investment analyst from Deutsche Bank in New York, Eugene Hsu.

Eugene Hsu is a small, round-faced, glasses man who feels like a typical Asian man who graduated from Fudan University and came to the United States early to study finance before working at Deutsche Bank. At the beginning of this year, he and his boss Lippmann sensed the undercurrent of the US financial market, and a small hedge fund went against common sense to buy a large number of Deutsche Bank's CDS, betting on the decline in housing prices in the real estate market.

After that, Lippmann and Eugene Hsu began to investigate and analyze the real estate market together, and in the process, Leon used his connections in New York to contact Eugene Hsu, using his strong mathematical statistics and analytical skills to help them conduct quantitative analysis, pointing out the shortcomings of Li Xianglin's CDO pricing model, and arguing that there are huge structural risks in the U.S. real estate market.

The crowd smelled the alluring scent of the danger, a smell that only scavengers could smell, the smell of corpses that had just begun to decompose. The U.S. financial market has been dead since the beginning of 2007, but this market is too large, and the layers of financial instruments have a lag effect on the transmission of information, so more than half a year has passed, and the rot has just begun.

Leon sat down, smiled at Eugene Hsu, pulled out a tissue from the side, and wiped his right hand, which had some broken glass shards on it and a small wound on his hand. Seeing this, Eugene Hsu asked, "What's wrong with your hand?" He spoke authentic Chinese, he knew that Leon was proficient in Chinese, in fact, this was one of the reasons why the two met and cooperated, Eugene Xu did not expect Leon to be a Puerto Rican, and he spoke Chinese so slippery.

Leon wiped his hands clean and said, "Some problems are better solved with fists than with mouths." How's that, have you figured it out? What does Lippmann mean? Do you want to jump out and go it alone? Are there any moves by investment banks? Leon asked a barrage of questions, and Eugene Hsu pushed his eyes and replied, "I'm still thinking about it, if the opportunity is good." Lippmann has already taken care of the financial market department, and he will run the next OTC, so you have to make sure that you can handle the Boston consortium. Investment banks have been making moves for a long time, and Morgan and Goldman Sachs have already started shorting. ”

It will be a lot less effort to talk to smart people, and Leon and Eugene Hsu were discussing two issues before, one is that he and Lippmann left Deutsche Bank to do investment consulting on their own, or set up a hedge fund, and the other is to take advantage of this crisis to pull in a big hedge fund, buy a large number of CDS, and short the real estate market. Relying on the second point, Leon and Lippmann can make a lot of money, but Leon is interested in more than just this amount of money, he wants these two to leave the bank and do it on their own.

In addition to helping them do data analysis, another important job for him is to persuade the funds under the Boston consortium of his father-in-law to join in, increase leverage, and double the income.

Leon took a large sip of the beer in front of him and said to Eugene Hsu: "I will definitely take care of it in Boston, if you decide to go out and go it alone, let me know in time, and I will help you find a cheap and easy office building in New York." ”

Eugene Hsu smiled: "We'll think about it, it's a pleasure to work together." ”

"It's a pleasure to work with."