Chapter 266 Premonition of Financial Crisis

Chapter 266 Premonition of Financial Crisis

Chapter 266 Premonition of Financial Crisis
The next day, Footscray Auto Parts City.

"You two seem to be in good spirits."

"That's right. Last night I took Brother Shouren to experience the local customs and practices of Australia."

"Haha, I'm old and useless. That big foreign horse was really hard to control yesterday!"

"No, no, Brother Shouren is still as skilled as ever."

"Your place is still the best. There are beautiful girls from all over the world. I'm so envious."

"That's right, there is no true love in the world, I love all girls!"

Listening to what the two said, Chen Xi could imagine what happened yesterday.

Today is the opening day of the auto parts city. There was no complicated ceremony, just a simple ribbon-cutting and the business was opened.

The goods were put up there by people working overtime just to ensure a smooth opening today. Because the advertisements had been put out long ago, many people came here, some of whom came from surrounding cities.

Some of the people here are the owners of various auto repair shops in Mo Village. They come here to see the products and discuss cooperation.

Wu Shouren was also stunned, he had never seen such a large auto parts city before. This scale could not even be imagined in China, because it would surely be a loss. It would be more cost-effective to build a large shopping mall and collect rent on such a large piece of land.

Moreover, local officials would not approve of such a move. After all, to boost the local economy, building such a huge structure would be a better choice in their eyes than to seek other more profitable industries instead of getting involved in this field.

"To be honest, this place is so big and a lot of space is empty. Isn't it a waste?" Wu Shouren was a little confused about their operations.

"That's how it is in Australia. It's a big place, and all the supermarkets do the same thing. It would certainly be useful to keep it in other places." Alin explained patiently.

"If this were in China, the boss would definitely make use of all the space. The vacant space would definitely be rented out, or a children's playground would be built to make money." Wu Shouren's mind was still full of ideas from China.

"This auto parts business is not successful everywhere. In some places, because people are relatively poor, they prefer to repair rather than replace items when they are damaged. In Australia, people usually prefer to replace damaged parts directly. I have seen in India and Pakistan that when a car battery is broken, they take a lot of effort to repair it because the labor cost there is relatively low..." Chen Xi explained to Wu Shouren in detail the market demand for auto parts in different countries.

After the auto parts city opened, business was very good. Alin cooperated with many auto repair shops and even used part of the vacant land for auto shows. Chen Xi also opened a used car dealership there.

A month later, due to this year's profit warning, the United States injected liquidity into the financial system to increase market confidence, and the stock market was able to maintain its high level. The S&P 500 index reached 1565.15 points, setting a record high. However, just two months later, the stock market began to fluctuate violently.

Long before, Chen Xi sold all of Chen Caiyue's stocks and called Zhao Lingshan to do the same.

He also exchanged some of the Australian dollars he had into Chinese currency through Aunt Shi Tao's accounting firm.

Since the last yacht party, Chen Xi has received several text messages and phone calls from Oksana.

This woman seemed to be very interested in him and asked him out for a date. As for what to do, they all knew what to do as adults.

Oksana was very smart. She did not directly ask Chen Xi if he had a partner, but hinted that they could be lovers.

Naturally, Chen Xi refused outright.

There were already signs of the financial crisis long before, and many people with a keen eye had already noticed the problem.

In the early 2000s, as interest rates in the U.S. real estate industry fell, house prices began to rise and people's demand for houses also increased.

To meet this demand, banks began offering subprime loans, which are loans to borrowers with lower credit scores.

The loans were packaged into bonds and sold to investment banks, which then resold them to investors in a process known as “flipping.”

To further diversify risks, investment banks split these recovered loans into small portions, making the risk of each small portion relatively low.

In this way, more investors can participate and capital can be more widely utilized.

In addition, investment banks also cooperate with risk rating agencies to package their products as almost risk-free investments through various means to attract more investors.

This operating model was very popular at the time because it not only met people's demand for housing, but also enabled banks and investment banks to maximize their profits.

Everything seems to be going well, but they are all based on one premise: house prices will continue to rise.

However, as lending standards were relaxed, house prices continued to rise, leaving many people finding themselves unaffordable.

At this time, the Federal Reserve began to raise interest rates, causing house prices to begin to fall.

Those who bought houses before found that the value of their houses continued to decline and had to mortgage their houses to banks. Ultimately, these burdens were passed on to investors who bought bonds.

The outbreak of the United States' domestic debt crisis has led to a large amount of funds flowing back to the United States from all over the world.

Countries around the world had previously purchased a large number of U.S. real estate bonds, which caused the U.S. financial crisis to quickly evolve into a global financial crisis.

In fact, ordinary Chinese people were not affected too much by this financial crisis, except for those engaged in foreign trade, factories and finance. Some people even got rich in disguised form.

This time when talking to Zhao Lingshan, the other party was obviously in a bad mood. Although the voice on the other end of the phone was still gentle and enthusiastic, Chen Xi vaguely felt that something was wrong.

Today, Chen Xi was attending classes at school as usual. Shi Tao, who was in the front row, was chatting with the girl next to him, and then he went to talk to Li Yuqing.

Li Yuqing, on the other hand, looked aloof. She only responded once for every ten sentences Shi Tao said.

This left Chen Xi confused.

What's going on with these two people?
When fellow villagers meet, won’t their eyes be filled with tears?

Why did Li Yuqing seem so indifferent? Considering that she was a very arrogant person, Chen Xi stopped dwelling on this issue.

"Ha, from now on, go to my store to buy wine, I'll give you discounts!" Ouyang Ming pointed at himself proudly. He opened a chain of wine stores in Blackburn, and his business was pretty good. Gradually, he became more and more confident in the wine business. This was also one of Liya's strategies. She still liked Ouyang Ming very much and didn't want him to return to China after graduation. Now that he had a business, if he had a family in the future, he could be tied to the land of Australia.

Chen Xi also hoped that the two of them could continue to be together. He felt it was a pity that they broke up before.

Li Yuqing sat in the front row. On the surface, she was listening to the class, but in fact her attention was always on the back row.

Since she started working as a purchasing agent for health products, her life has become a little better. However, her attitude towards customers has always been poor, resulting in few repeat customers.

Seeing that other purchasing agents made more money than her, Li Yuqing concluded that the reason was that the goods she sold were too single. Now, hearing Ouyang Ming in the back row talking about the red wine business, she immediately thought of combining red wine with purchasing agents.

She originally wanted to be a purchasing agent for luxury goods, but her friends in China were not very rich, and some even worried about receiving fake goods, which made her very angry.

People are like people, and for Li Yuqing, who comes from an average family, none of her friends are second-generation rich. In addition, due to her own reasons, she has not met many rich people so far. Occasionally, she has met a few rich boys, but they are all for her body with ulterior motives.

"Business is pretty good recently! Gouzi has replaced his car with a BMW 5 Series, but why did you, the boss, sell your car? Now you drive a second-hand Sakura car." Ouyang Ming shook his head and looked at Chen Xi, looking like a smug villain.

"Change your taste! A new car will be released soon, so I'll change it then." Chen Xi smiled.

He thinks it doesn't matter what car he drives. The Australian dollar is about to plummet, so he bought the car quickly before the price adjusted. The CLS has already been sold to someone else. Now that he has his own car dealership, he can drive whatever car he wants.

"Haha, if I have a girlfriend from the Sakura Country, I naturally have to drive a Sakura car." Ouyang Ming raised his arms in a lewd manner and made a few powerful sprinting movements, which made Chen Xu and others laugh.

The teacher on the stage glared at a few people in dissatisfaction, which made them stop laughing.

When Li Yuqing heard this, she thought Chen Xi had lost money in business and the quality of his car had dropped. She was secretly glad that she had not had anything to do with him.

When she thought of Shi Tao, she was full of doubts again.

After recently coming into contact with Shi Tao, she discovered that he didn't seem to have much money.

He didn't buy a car, and even his spending didn't seem very generous.

Whenever I went out to meet him, we would eat rice with toppings in a small restaurant. He was not even as wealthy as Tian Gou, let alone giving me gifts.

Li Yuqing thought that the other party was pretending to be poor, so she wanted to observe for a while, and if it didn't work, she would withdraw and move on to another target. The reason why she persisted for so long was that she was attracted by Shi Tao's idea of ​​not getting married.

Soon it was time to end the get out of class, and several people got up and prepared to find a restaurant to eat and chat.

"You bunch of Chinese students, don't talk in class. You come here to study. And next time, speak in English." The teacher was a middle-aged foreigner with pockmarks all over his face. He lectured Chen Xi and others with dissatisfaction. Seeing that they seemed to know they were wrong, the teacher did not pursue the matter any further.

"Fuck, a bunch of big bosses have to be taught a lesson. How will we save our reputation if this gets out?" Ouyang Ming complained loudly after walking out of the classroom.

"Come on! Look, there are students in their forties in the school. Some of them are bosses, but they are still scolded by teachers. Only you want to be treated specially, right?" Chen Xu kicked him on the butt again.

Ouyang Ming started to show off after doing a little business, and Chen Xu couldn't stand it anymore.

"I heard from my friends in the United States that the situation there is not good! The stock market has plummeted, and China's stock market has also begun to fall."

"My family is still investing money in it! It's just like gambling, it's a bottomless pit."

"Is a drop bad? You can buy at the bottom now. You guys don't know anything. It will go up sooner or later."

In a small restaurant next to the school, several people sat down and began to chat, expressing their opinions.

"Li Xin! It's not good for you to ask me out alone like this. If other boys see this, how can I find a boyfriend in the future? If you have something to say, just talk to Xinyi directly. Why do you have to ask me to be the middleman?"

"Oh my god, what era is this? There are still people writing letters. Do you have no internet access at home? Or do you have no money to pay the phone bill? This can't be a love letter, wow ~ I didn't expect you to be so retro. Only students in China would do this."

A burst of exclamations was heard. Chen Xi, who was sitting on the second floor, looked down curiously and saw Zhang Ruoxi and Li Xin sitting at a table eating.

Li Xin pushed an envelope in front of her. Zhang Ruoxi picked up the envelope, looked at it left and right, and laughed continuously.

In her opinion, only domestic students can write love letters, and international students like them would only think it is old-fashioned.

"Just give it to her for me." Li Xin said calmly. He is now very different from before. He is no longer the one who has an expressionless face all the time.

Since the last incident, Shen Xinyi has never answered his calls or replied to his text messages. Although he didn't block her, it was no different from blocking her.

Therefore, he could only restore contact with her by writing a letter and asking Zhang Ruoxi to deliver it.

Last time he went back and thought about it, he felt that he had done something wrong, but there was nothing he could do about it. The old man at home was still counting on him...

When he thought of this, Li Xin could only swallow his pride and do something he would never have thought of before.

"What are you looking at? The food is getting cold."

"oh oh."

Chen Xi, who was unconsciously absorbed in watching, was patted by Chen Xu and quickly turned back to continue eating.

This Li Xin is really interesting, but he doesn't seem to be a bad person.

If Shen Xinyi could be with him...

This should also be a good choice.

What is Xinyi's situation now?
Last time you said you liked me in public, eh~
Chen Xi was eating absentmindedly, while the people around him were chatting about economic problems in various countries.

(End of this chapter)