Manhattan Reborn 1978

a new day.

Houston, Texas.

In the morning light, a passenger plane flying from New York landed smoothly at Houston International Airport.

More than an hour later.

West of downtown, Piney Point Village in the Memorial District, 19 Pinewood Avenue.

in the living room

When David was sitting between Zina and Cui Yingying, chatting and laughing with them in low voices, two unexpected visitors knocked on the door.

They are Pine, and Grace.

(Note: Morgan family has four children, namely the eldest son Panaris, the eldest daughter Cheryl, the second son Giles and the youngest daughter Laura.

Elder is the partner of the eldest son Panaris, Grace is the partner of the eldest daughter Cheryl, Pine is the partner of the second son Giles, and David's fiancée Lilith is the partner of the youngest daughter Laura.)

. . .

After a while.

After David saw the two girls off and walked into the study with the newspaper, he just happened to see Pine walk to the desk with a crystal clear perfume bottle in his hand and curiosity in his eyes.

"Well...you don't know, this thing made me..."

"We know. We heard about it." Grace, who was wearing a women's business skirt, sat on the sofa with her legs naturally together. She waved and smiled at him.

"Come and sit down first. We have limited time and we have to catch a plane later!"

"Ah? Oh..." David's gaze unconsciously lingered on Grace's legs wrapped in stockings for a few seconds, then he collected his thoughts, walked over to sit next to her, turned to look at Pine, and asked.

"Why are you all here together? Do you want to see me for something?"

"Of course!" Grace glanced at the perfume bottle put down by Pine and raised her eyebrows at David.

"I heard that you didn't go out the whole day yesterday?"

"Yeah, the side effects of this thing are too severe. I feel like my body hasn't recovered yet..." David grinned, smiled bitterly and shook his head awkwardly.

"Haha." Pine walked to the back of the desk and sat down, putting on an appearance of quietly eating melon, ready to watch the show quietly.

"Oh?" Grace seemed to have noticed David's gaze just now. She deliberately raised her left leg and shook it. With a playful smile on her lips, she asked in a charming voice.

"I've only heard of this kind of perfume before, but I've never seen it before..."

"At noon, let's fly back to New York together!"

"If your body doesn't recover, what should I do?"

"Are you going to take advantage of me?"

"..What? Leaving at noon?" Although David's eyes were involuntarily attracted to her beautiful legs in stockings, his mind had already converged and he asked with a surprised frown.

"Hmm!" Grace looked at David's expression and movements carefully, and felt very satisfied that he could control his body's instincts.

"Have you forgotten that you still hold the position of observer of the New York Federal Reserve?"

"I haven't forgotten. I've been submitting observation reports in recent months."

“Since you submitted a report to the New York Fed, why didn’t you submit one to Stanley as well?”

"I remember that you accepted Leslie's invitation and took a consulting position in their family office."

"Didn't Stanley pay you any consulting fees? Or did you give the observation report that should have been given to Stanley to Rockefeller?"

"..!!" When David heard her say this, all the doubts in his heart disappeared. Under Grace's gaze, he kept looking at her beautiful legs and said calmly.

"In the second drawer to the right of Pine, there is an observation report I just finished last night. I plan to submit it in a few days."

"Since you are here, take a look first."

“If you think it’s useful, you can just take the original copy away, or just don’t give it to the New York Fed!”

"..!?" Grace looked at Pine in surprise. Seeing him take out a report from a yellow paper bag in the drawer, she began to doubt David's strong confidence.

Because she had been helping HBO TV network with its merger and development plan for local TV stations across the country in the previous few months, and had paid little attention to David's situation.

However, Pine is different from her~

Since the first day he met David, he has been closely following David's every move through various channels and has the deepest understanding of this kid's style of doing things.

So after quickly flipping through a few pages of the document in his hand, he stood up with a serious expression, walked to Grace, and handed it to her silently.

David's eyes swept back and forth between Pine and Grace's faces, various speculations kept flashing through his mind, but he tried to speak in a calm tone.

"The main responsibilities of the Fed observers I proposed are to monitor economic data, analyze the monetary policy implemented by the Fed, pay attention to the remarks of Fed officials and federal government officials, assess market reactions, and finally analyze the above information to provide investors, businesses and government departments with professional advice on monetary policy and economic prospects."

"In recent months, the observation reports submitted to the New York Fed have put forward their own suggestions on interest rate policy, inflation observation, changes in economic data and policy uncertainty."

"These suggestions... no, I think you have all read these reports."

"If they can be seen and adopted by senior policymakers at the New York Fed or the US Fed, you should also be aware of the impact they will have on the financial market."

"So, after I made my views clear a few months ago, I plan to focus on the problems hidden behind national debt, corporate debt, municipal debt, bank debt, etc. in my report at the beginning of next month."

"Bonds?" Grace paused while flipping through the report, frowned slightly, and muttered.

"Yes!" David stood up and walked to the bookshelf, picking out the books carefully left by his mentor, Professor Bartlet, while preaching.

“I am particularly interested in studying economics for two main reasons.”

"One is to gain the purest knowledge, so that it can broaden my horizons and enhance the depth and breadth of my thinking."

"The other one is to explain the various situations I encountered in reality."

"Because the research topics in economics cover many aspects, almost every aspect of life is involved"

“I want to be an excellent economics researcher, and imagination, intuition, reasoning, sympathy, rigor, and boldness are all indispensable qualities for me.”

David picked out a few books, turned around and walked to Pine to put them down, then sat down next to Grace, lowered his eyes, carefully admiring her calves wrapped in flesh-colored stockings, and continued.

“Economists must seek truth from facts in their academic research and conduct detailed studies on issues within their scope.”

“Although in many cases, these facts are not the goal or answer I am looking for, the history that has happened is a record of facts, and I need to use the method of inference to get the part I want from it.”

"But recently, when I was thinking and reading historical materials, I found that some of the inference methods I used before had some problems."

"So in this report, I tried to use the correct research method to collect those essentially the same time and judgments, and briefly talked about it with my understanding of the bond market."

"Do you like watching it?" Grace asked as she noticed David's eyes were focused on her legs while she was listening to his story. Her mood suddenly became very complicated.

"Huh..? Yes, I like it!"

David was stunned by this question. He looked up at Grace reluctantly, shrugged and smiled.

"You're not the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, but you have the most beautiful calves..."

"I know we're not that familiar with each other, but I still want to take the liberty to ask..."

"If you don't mind, can I touch it?"

"..No!" Although Grace saw no offense in David's eyes, she didn't want to be taken advantage of by this bastard in front of her, so she glared at him and snorted coldly.

"Hahaha~ I think it's okay!" Pine, who was sitting nearby, couldn't help laughing and patting his knees when he heard David shamelessly make such an excessive request, and made a face at Grace and joked.

"I'm sorry, I... I still can't control myself..." David took a deep breath, looked into Grace's eyes and smiled bitterly.

Grace stared at David for a while with a strange expression, then turned to look at the bottle of perfume on the desk. The corners of her mouth curled up slightly, and she adjusted her sitting posture in a natural way, pointing with her hand.

"We have limited time, so you better get down to business!"

"OK," David grinned, lowered his head to look at Grace's outstretched legs, and said after thinking for a moment.

"According to the latest statistics at the beginning of this year, the total amount of treasury bonds issued by the Federal Reserve to help the federal government save the fiscal deficit has exceeded 7000 billion US dollars!"

"At the same time, because of the phased interest rate hike policy implemented by the Federal Reserve in the past six months, there have been several waves of buying sprees in Wall Street's corporate bond market and junk bond market, causing the total amount of various bonds that can be traded in the market to exceed 1400 billion US dollars!"

"We all know that whether it is government bonds, corporate bonds or junk bonds, their essence is a time bomb buried in the balance sheet."

“Throughout history, we can see from various real data during the Great Depression”

"The average loan interest rate for U.S. companies fell from about 1979% in 5.8 to about 1933% in 4.3."

"At the same time, the total amount of corporate bonds, which is the closest substitute for bank loans, also dropped sharply from 1929 billion euros in 21 to 1933 million euros in 4000!"

David said this, picked up a book from the low table in front of him, and held it in front of Pine and Grace: "In Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz's world-famous work "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960", there are many pages that actually support the view that the United States suffered during the Great Depression due to companies' active reduction of debt and insufficient demand for loans, which led to a sharp deflation phenomenon that lasted for several years."

"The trigger for the Great Depression was that American companies were too optimistic during the Roaring 20s and lacked the awareness of risk management when production profit margins plummeted and debt levels were too high."

David said, picking up a book from the low table and holding it in front of Grace: "The debt-deflation theory proposed by Irving Fisher points out that excessive corporate debt is an important cause of the Great Depression!"

"In a state of over-indebtedness, debtors and creditors will accelerate debt repayment out of prudence, which will trigger a series of chain reactions such as asset sales, reduced money circulation velocity, and price declines, leading to a reduction in corporate assets and investment, thus falling into a vicious cycle."

"And now the fiscal policy implemented by the Federal Reserve has become one of the important indicators for governments around the world to monitor the macroeconomy."

"How to prevent the bond crowding-out effect during the Fed's interest rate hike cycle..."

"Wait a minute, what is the debt crowding-out effect?" Grace asked with a frown as she quickly flipped through the report in her hand.

"This... You can find it in the last paragraph of page 5..."