Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [86]
“I’ve asked Mr. Louis Lavine in Tennessee to buy NCR stock which is now at nineteen, and continue to buy it until the price moves up to thirty. He’s prepared to commit up to seventy-five million dollars for the purchase.”
Birnbaum then went on to explain to the President why the plan he’d conceived could work.
“I only hope that the courage of these two gentlemen will actually turn the direction of this catastrophe. I pray it will restore some necessary optimism. Mr. President, I have a belief that it will…
“Once the market sniffs a demand for these two bellwether issues, smart money will start moving. The risk arbitragers, who can spot an uptrend in an avalanche and who command billions in ready cash, will begin testing the waters.
“I have advised a select few of my associates, who have responsibility for mutual and pension funds around the country, that a dramatic break in the crisis situation is imminent. I have suggested that they look for opportunities to begin bargain hunting, before they lose out on a very fast and favorable profit spiral. A spiral back close to where the market began this morning.”
The news of Birnbaum’s recovery plan traveled with appropriate dispatch through the main Trade Center conference room. Emotional arguments over whether the daring strategy was right, or disastrous, raged immediately.
“Clyde Miller has just bankrupted his own corporation.” One of the detractors laughed with derision at the news.
Two other middle-aged bankers argued their way into a fist fight Creaking haymakers were thrown. A loop of bankers and stock analysts surrounded the breathless, wheezing pugilists arid a couple of side bets were laid. The fight ended with both bankers leaning against each other in fatigue, as if they were each trying to shore up the other’s dignity.
As the winter morning passed into steely gray afternoon, however, it was obvious that the Birnbaum plan was either too late or too little.
The largest single-day losses ever had already been recorded on the world’s stock markets.
On October 29, 1929, losses had been fourteen billion.
On December 14, the single day’s recorded losses around the world exceeded two hundred billion.
Chapter 64
LATE THAT NIGHT, Caitlin swallowed warm sips of diet soda and sat entranced before a forty-inch television screen just off the main crisis room.
The monitor’s reception was crisp, the antennas for the major national networks all being up on the Trade Center roof.
“This is it,” she whispered to Carroll. “The exchange in Hong Kong will be the first important one to open around the world. Sydney and Tokyo are both staying closed until noon. Yesterday, the Hang Seng Index fell 80 points. This will tell the story.”
Caitlin and Carroll were sitting within a tightly clustered nest of Wall Street bankers, frayed men and women who were like spectators burned out by watching some unlikely sport event that stretched day after day. A closed-circuit TV broadcast was being beamed by satellite transmission from Asia to New York.
On the flickering screen, they watched cameramen and news reporters—live—recording history from behind Hong Kong police lines.
Farther down the crowded, rowdy street, tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents were loudly chanting, waving hand-printed political placards. Meanwhile, single lines of dark-suited stockbrokers were beginning to solemnly march into the exchange itself.
“The brokers look like pallbearers,” Carroll whispered to Caitlin.
“It isn’t a cheery sight, is it? It does look like a state funeral.”
A correspondent for one of the American networks stepped up to a TV camera planted on the mobbed Hong Kong street. The newsman wore a rumpled seersucker