CH 184

The area that Charles Powell had been focusing on the past few years was the Bilderberg Club, the pinnacle of the power structure, also known as the government of the world. Charles had been hiding in the hotel under the guise of a guest a week before the conference, but he had been uncovered by the club authorities and got kicked out two days ago. Then, he joined the protestors and interviewed them.

“The conference finally begins today, but the head of our administration still hasn’t given us a full explanation and doesn’t seem to want to.”

The Bilderberg Club never wanted their secret meetings to be revealed to the public. They prohibited mass media reporting and punished anyone who spread a fake rumor about them. Therefore, the only media chasing Bilderberg was a small private company run by Charles Powell.

“Listen carefully, President. You guys are breaking federal law, and you should know that federal officials are not allowed to discuss the country's policies with the non-federal officials. Do you think we don’t know anything about what’s going on there?”

Charles continued by turning the camera around, “Please tell me your story.”

His microphone was given to another protestor.

“It’s a big misconception that our President was elected under a democracy! The truth is! The people in there chose him and forged to win the election!”

“Please say something to those who dismiss it as a conspiracy theory,” Charles said.

“The 125 richest and most powerful people in the world have a meeting every year. Isn’t it more ridiculous if they meet up to simply have steak and then say goodbye? The world is not all about what we see, and the real things are invisible as they’re behind the scenes. Like that Bilderberg Club!”

Wooooooo-

People started booing, but it wasn’t toward Charles and the interviewee. The restricted area was opening, and a vehicle was coming out of the hotel. Police were already warning protestors to stay off the road.

“We are not your slaves! Okay? You are not our masters!”

“Disband the Bilderberg Club! Disband! Disband!”

“No funny tricks!”

The group of protestors was small, with fewer than a hundred people, but their enthusiasm was noticeable. Charles’s team moved fast and focused on the front window of the vehicle as it was illegal to tint it dark. The members’ cars usually entered and left slowly for the safety of the protestors. However, the vehicle that had just left the hotel didn’t slow down at all. It barely managed to avoid an accident, then protestors booed at the hotel even more.

Meanwhile, Charles looked at the footage. The license plate was identical to that of Isaac Rothschild’s car, and the video had captured him in the back seat. However, there were medical staff on both sides of him, which meant that Isaac had a health problem that couldn’t be handled by the hotel’s medical team.

I can hit the jackpot with this!

Charles’s issues were often marginalized and treated as conspiracy theories, but a story became more credible as evidence built up. The red light on the Rothschild family indicated the starting point for future changes.

In fact, Charles’s biggest success from covering the club this year was filming Jonathan Hunter’s entry to the hotel. That was the Jonathan Hunter from the Jonathan Investment and Finance Group!

Charles’s main focus was on the Bilderberg Club, but the club was held only once a year. Therefore, he had been tracking the Jonathan Group on other days to discover how far their money had impacted the world by searching the process they took to dominate the North American economy.

Charles had been thinking that the public knew nothing. He believed that nations and people all around the world should be informed and alerted to the current reality that was dominated by a small number of financial elites. From his perspective, that was his patriotic duty. Former President Abrahan Lincoln had sensed a crisis like this from the very beginning.

“The capital power tries to gulp the nation in moments of peace and seeks changes in times of adversity. That is more ferocious than the monarchy, more arrogant than dictatorship, and more selfish than bureaucracy. I am aware that there will be a crisis in the near future that will cripple me and make me tremble in front of my country’s danger. The age of corruption will follow, the wealth will be concentrated on a few, and capital power will extend its authority by hurting the public until the republic gets destroyed.”

Lincoln ended up being assassinated, but his prediction had become true.

Maybe… the Jonathan Group could be more of a problem than the Bilderberg Club.

Charles thought things had overlapped too much to be coincidental. From the moment the Jonathan Group’s capital controlled the U.S. economy, the traditional families that ruled the world began to die out. Joshua von Karjan staged a coup in the Karjan family, and the Goldsteins shattered when their female head disappeared, then they were sold at a low price to the Korean capital. The head and successor of the Morgan family had also vanished, and now, the core member of Rothschild was in danger.

Did all these happen by coincidence?

The next day, a new car showed up. Dresner Rothschild, known as the second-in-command of the Rothschild family, was on board. The protestors were well acknowledged of the situation like Charles. They began booing and swearing at the car.

“Get out of our land, Rothschild pigs!”

“We are watching you! You are exposed everywhere!”

“You think we don’t know that the Central Bank belongs to you? Ha! We know everything!”

***

Dresner Rothschild was in a bad mood. The chirping of the lowest class was blocked by the doors, so he couldn’t even hear it properly. The protestors weren’t the reason why he was mad. It was true that the possibility of him inheriting the throne had increased as the current head had recently fainted due to high blood pressure. However, the family’s problem was far too serious.

The family’s property had been mortgaged when Isaac tried to corner the Jonathan Group’s oil market. The troubled mortgage acquisition was a nuclear bomb that cost 2.7 trillion dollars, and the family’s survival was at stake because it was all tied in cash.

I’m entering the Bilderberg Club that I’ve been waiting for my entire life under these cruddy circumstances. Life can’t be worse than this… ugh.

Dresner wandered around the members’ rooms and finally met Jonathan.

“I am Dresner Rothschild.”

“Jonathan Hunter.”

“I will get to the point. The products you sold to us have lots of problems.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Don’t play innocent. Didn’t you know about this and just leave it to our family?”

“How is Isaac doing? I heard he is paralyzed from the waist down. Tsk, tsk. His face is still fine, so you should hear it from your head, not from me. It was Isaac who went crazy and took it away from us. He was very happy with our group’s crisis.”

Jonathan continued without holding back his laughter, “Are you here for business? Or are you here to argue with me?”

“Let’s find an agreement. I’m giving you a chance, Jonathan.”

“Chance? What chance?”

“My family never forgets debt. We will pay you back with high interest. That is what credit is.”

“Are you asking for help?”

“I’m kindly warning you not to incur our enmity.”

“You don’t know what kind of mess Isaac had done before he passed out. He turned the North American members into enemies. He held his head high the entire time. You should have seen him.”

“Let’s not cloud the issue here.”

“I’d bet that if the club allowed us to bring guns, Isaac would have turned this place into a street warzone. You still haven’t read the atmosphere, have you? The Rothschilds have been isolated.”

Dresner became speechless as Jonathan was correct. The family’s head had caused resentment among the club members, not knowing things would go this badly.

“Well, then let’s come to an agreement,” Jonathan said.

“We will give you back the mortgage division at one billion dollars.”

“Hmph. That trash? Do you think I’m an idiot? That’s terrible.”

“You guys made that trash.”

“Look, Dresner. That’s not what an agreement is. An agreement is to find a compromise and share the same view. I will tell you our terms first. We can provide financial aid to you if you give us the right one.”

“Tell me.”

Jonathan replied with a malicious smile, “Stake in the U.S. Central Bank.”

***

<Seon-Hu: So?>

<Jonathan: He shook like his blood pressure would soar up. I thought he would follow the former head in fainting. Anyway, he asked how much we could lend him, and that was all that idiot was thinking. The important thing is when not how much, right?>

<Seon-Hu: Right.>

<Jonathan: I told him we could lend money after the subprime market explodes, then this stupid idiot threw a tantrum, saying that he will get revenge or something. So I told him to come back when he needed money, then kicked him out. Most of the guys are like that here. They believe their problems will be solved if they raise their voices as they are used to wielding absolute power.>

<Seon-Hu: Haha. Yeah, it has been like that so far.>

<Jonathan: Anyway, he will try his best not to let go of the stake in the U.S. Central Bank.>

<Seon-Hu: Well, we will see.>

It was a matter to wait and see because the size of the subprime crisis was much larger than it was in the past. History had changed as financial forces expanded the scale by jumping in later. The noticeable signs were supposed to have appeared nonstop since last summer if things had gone the way it had in the past. However, the Bear Stearns Group filed for bankruptcy out of the blue.

According to past history, the public had to realize that the subprime market was no longer valuable after two hedge funds filed for bankruptcy. Since then, banks around the world would be constantly on the move to clean up the market, but they had to focus on hiding internal crises as it had already been discovered. That was what happened in the past.

However, the bigger the bubble, the more explosive it was. The mid-process had almost been omitted this time. Things happened so fast due to the more destructive bubble explosion that the market couldn’t react to it. The Bear Stearns Groups’ bankruptcy was just a catalyst.

Thud!

<Jonathan: Sun!>

Jonathan’s voice suddenly got louder.

<Seon-Hu: I’m looking at it.>

I answered while looking at the breaking news on the monitor. Just in time, a bomb had exploded at one of the top ten investment banks in the field.

<Jonathan: AHMI[1] is also destroyed. Haha…>

<Seon-Hu: Leave the Rothschilds alone for now until they come to their senses.>

When the mortgage business they had taken burst, they would have no choice but to ask us for help. We were the only group in the world who had enough cash to bail them out. Therefore, we would take their stake in the U.S. Central Bank on that day. It would be a shame to just rake in, so we should try printing some dollars.

1. American Home Mortgage Investment. ☜