Volume 7 I've Been Here Chapter 1005 Cockroach Effect
Last year, when Zhao Shixian's due date was approaching, she suddenly became interested in organizing.
Organize the refrigerator, store the toilet paper, grab the servant's help, clean the whole house, and vacuum every corner.
She also used a toothbrush as a cleaning tool to try to scrub every crevice in the baby's room, washed all the sheets, quilt covers and clothes, and kept washing and tidying up Nan Ruoqi's clothes.
This is not a manifestation of prenatal depression, but a return of primitive maternal instinct, professionally called "nesting response."
Nesting is an instinct of all animals, a typical, stereotyped behavior pattern that all members of a certain species have, and they will act in a fixed pattern when exposed to a specific set of stimuli.
It is fixed by heredity and appears one by one during the development of individuals with maturity and appropriate stimulation experience. For example, the foraging, self-defense and reproductive actions of birds building nests, bees making honey, and chickens hatching eggs are all innate instinctive behaviors of specific species.
Instinct is not just a local response to simple stimulation, but a series of behavioral activities carried out according to a predetermined procedure, such as when a bird builds a nest, it can skillfully select and place nesting materials and pluck its own feathers to line the nest.
Instinct is a reflex activity formed by animals during the process of racial evolution and fixed and passed on to offspring. Although the procedures of instinctive behavior vary in complexity and duration, they are shared by animals of the same species. This is of great significance for maintaining the survival of the animal species and reproducing offspring.
As higher animals, not every human being inherits the instinct to build a nest, but the attachment to, dependence on and pursuit of a nest are inherited by all without exception.
As humans reproduce and evolve from generation to generation, they become more and more dependent on nests and have higher and higher requirements. In order to strengthen the inheritance of this gene, the genes reorganize and upgrade themselves, and write this inheritance into the courtship gene.
When a male human is courting a female human, he will use a small piece of paper that is recognized by many humans to represent his nest and show it off to the female human for appreciation. The more pieces of paper he has and the larger the area of the nest it represents, the more recognition and admiration he will gain from the female human.
Male humans who have no papers or only old papers sourly call this behavior "materialism."
The earliest real estate bubble in human history occurred in Florida, USA in 1926. This statement is both right and wrong. This is because the concepts of bubble economy and real estate bubble appeared very late. When we trace back the history of them, we find that the earliest can only be traced back to the real estate bubble in Florida, and there is a lack of data support for the earlier ones.
Some people say that mankind has never learned from history, and history is nothing but the same things repeating themselves over and over again.
Regardless of whether this statement makes sense or not, or whether there are theoretical loopholes, at least mankind has never learned the lesson of the real estate bubble. Nine out of ten crises are related to real estate, and bubble events keep repeating themselves.
Real estate is the mother of cycles. In terms of driving economic growth, the real estate industry plays a vital role in the macro-economy, whether in developing or developed countries.
Every economic boom is mostly related to consumer investment driven by real estate, while every economic depression is mostly related to the bursting of the real estate bubble.
From the perspective of wealth effect, in typical countries, the market value of real estate is generally 2-3 times the annual GDP and 50% of the total variable price wealth, which is far beyond the reach of other asset markets such as the stock market, bond market, commodity market, and collectibles market.
After World War II, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries and regions successively achieved sustained high-speed growth and were once called the "Asian Miracle."
From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, affected by the Persian Gulf War, the third oil crisis, the bursting of the Japanese economic bubble, and the disintegration of the Soviet revisionism, the US economy performed poorly and the US dollar index weakened.
At the same time, the economies of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Indonesia achieved a high growth rate of about 10% during this period, attracting a large amount of international capital to flow into South Asia, and the scale of foreign debt increased significantly.
The debt maturity in these regions is seriously mismatched, and a large amount of short- and medium-term foreign debt has entered the real estate investment field. Real estate speculation is prevalent in Thailand and other countries, and asset bubbles are constantly expanding.
In terms of exchange rate policy, countries such as Thailand, while expanding financial liberalization and abolishing capital controls, still maintain a fixed exchange rate system, providing conditions for international speculative capital.
In the mid-1990s, the US economy began to recover strongly. The Federal Reserve under Greenspan raised the federal funds rate to cope with possible inflation risks, and the US dollar entered a second round of strong cycle. The currencies of South Asian countries that adopted a fixed exchange rate system were forced to appreciate, and their export competitiveness was weakened.
At the same time, the RMB has depreciated significantly, China has shown strong competitiveness in attracting foreign investment and increasing exports, and the world's manufacturing production base is shifting to China.
In June 1984, Thailand began to implement an exchange rate system pegged to a "basket of currencies". The currencies and weights in the basket were: US dollar 80% to 82%, Japanese yen 11% to 13%, and West German mark 6% to 8%.
The Bank of Thailand announces the central exchange rate every day, with a floating range of ±0.02% of the central exchange rate. Under this institutional arrangement, the exchange rate of the Thai baht to the US dollar has been maintained at 25:1 for a long time, becoming a de facto peg to the US dollar system.
From 1984 to 1995, the US dollar continued to weaken against major currencies, and the Thai baht depreciated accordingly, which improved Thailand's export competitiveness. During this period, Thailand's economy grew at an annual rate of about 8%, becoming one of the "Four Asian Tigers" that attracted worldwide attention.
This year, the international foreign exchange market has reversed, with the U.S. dollar's exchange rate against major currencies turning from depreciating to appreciating. The Thai baht has appreciated significantly along with the U.S. dollar, which has had a serious negative impact on exports.
From 1991 to 1995, Thailand's average annual export growth rate was 18.17%. At present, it has shown a trend of sharp decline.
In fact, even without the reversal of the US dollar exchange rate, the long-term implementation of the peg system will weaken the export competitiveness of enterprises. In other words, the peg system shields the exchange rate risk, and coupled with the artificial underestimation of the local currency, foreign trade enterprises form a reliance on low prices and lose the incentive to compete.
Thailand's economy is mainly driven by exports, and the decline in exports has led to a rapid expansion of Thailand's current account deficit. Thailand has had a current account deficit since the early 1990s, and this year it has reached $11.5 billion, accounting for 8.3% of GDP, higher than Mexico's 7.2% before the financial crisis last year.
Generally speaking, when a country has a current account deficit, the foreign exchange market will automatically adjust the exchange rate level to depreciate the local currency, thereby reducing the export cost of domestic goods, increasing exports, and achieving a balance of international payments.
However, under the peg system, the Thai baht exchange rate was artificially fixed and lost its function of regulating the balance of payments.
Faced with the ever-widening current account deficit, the Thai government has had to accelerate the pace of opening up its capital market and adopt a variety of preferential policies, including foreign exchange liberalization and high interest rate policies, to attract large inflows of foreign capital.
Thailand has taken two important measures to open its capital account. One is to open up offshore financial business and launch the Bangkok International Financial Facility (BIBF).
Under this framework, the Bank of Thailand issued BIBF operating licenses to 15 Thai commercial banks and Thai branches of 35 foreign commercial banks. All approved commercial banks can absorb deposits and borrow from abroad, and then lend in foreign currency in Thai OUT-IN and foreign OUT-OUT.
Second, Thailand allows non-residents to open Thai baht accounts in Thai commercial banks, make deposits or borrow money, and freely convert the baht. So far, there are not many capital projects that Thailand has not yet opened.
In order to make up for the huge current account deficit, Thailand also borrowed heavily in foreign debt. Not only did the scale of foreign debt expand rapidly, but the structure of foreign debt became seriously unbalanced.
In 1992, Thailand's foreign debt was US$39.6 billion, which has increased to US$75 billion this year, equivalent to 50% of GDP. On average, each Thai citizen bears a foreign debt of US$1,560, of which short-term foreign debt accounts for about 45%.
In addition, the private sector borrowed a lot of money overseas, and the asset-liability structure of enterprises and banking institutions was mismatched in currency. In addition, short-term debt in foreign currency was mainly used for long-term investment in the country's non-tradable sectors, especially real estate. When the Thai currency was forced to depreciate and interest rates rose, the debt burden increased, causing liquidity and solvency problems.
The peg system is actually an implicit guarantee for exchange rate risk provided by the government. Under this system arrangement, the Thai government provides implicit guarantee for exchange rate risk to domestic enterprises, financial institutions, investors, and international creditors.
Since the peg system shielded the exchange rate risk, it caused a large influx of speculative capital. In 1989, the outflow and inflow of foreign private capital to Thailand were about 100 billion baht, and in 1994, they reached about 1.5 trillion baht, an increase of more than 10 times in four years.
Moreover, among these capitals, short-term capital accounts for a larger proportion and grows faster.
Since the beginning of this year, non-resident Thai baht deposits, corporate short-term dollar borrowing through the BIBF, and foreign investment in the stock market have increased sharply.
Due to the sharp decline in exports, Thailand's economic growth has slowed down significantly. At this time, it is necessary to implement an expansionary monetary policy and lower interest rates to stimulate economic growth. However, as the Thai baht is facing huge depreciation pressure, in order to maintain the exchange rate system pegged to the US dollar, the Bank of Thailand is forced to implement a tight monetary policy and continue to raise interest rates.
The average deposit and loan interest rate for Thai baht reached 15%, the highest in Asia at the time and more than twice the international average.
The high interest rate policy further suppressed investment and consumption, aggravated the economic recession, and further worsened the non-performing assets of commercial banks, making the already shaky Thai economy even worse. It also increased the pressure on the Thai baht to depreciate, providing an opportunity for international speculators.
There are tens of millions of retail investors in the global stock market, and many of them are smart. They not only seek insider information, but also keep an eye on national and even international financial news. Once a global economic crisis occurs, they can often get the news hours or even days earlier than other retail investors.
In a shabby house, they can always find the cockroaches crawling around before others do. However, according to the cockroach law, when you see a cockroach in the light, it means that there are too many of them to hide in the dark. Similarly, when ordinary people feel the arrival of an economic crisis, it means that the economy has been rotting for a long time in inconspicuous corners.
This is the case with the Thai stock market. It did not follow the expected trajectory until the Soros attack in 1998 that caused the decline. In fact, it had already shown signs of decline earlier, as early as 1993, even earlier than 1995.
If we start counting from 100 points in 1987, the Thai stock market increased more than six times by the end of 1993, and then remained at a high level and fluctuated sideways. That is to say, by the end of 1993, the Thai stock market had reached its peak, and there was no sufficient support for further increase.
A team from PY Securities led by Nian Lufu and a team from Creativity Real Estate formed the "Hong Kong-Thailand Friendship Promotion Association". They came to Bangkok a long time ago and drew funds from Hong Kong to invest in Thailand's stock and real estate markets. They showed a fearless internationalist spirit, carried forward the candle style, burned themselves to illuminate others, and made a great contribution to the sublimation of friendship between Hong Kong and Thailand.
In May this year, the volatility of the Thai stock market became increasingly larger, revealing a little room to earn back the cost of short selling. Zhao Shixian rushed to Bangkok to express his condolences to the traders who were on business trips in Thailand, worked hard, and were in deteriorating health, showing signs of insufficient kidney water. He also went to the front line in person to boost morale.
The area around Sukhumvit is the commercial center of Thailand. Surrounding the eastern part of Bangkok city center, in the golden area of Sukhumvit Central Axis Main Road, there is the EM business district, an upper-class residential area that is well-known in Bangkok.
In the EM business district, there is a place called "Phrom Phong", which is transliterated as "Phrom Phong". It has a nickname called "Little Japan in Bangkok". According to the abbreviation method of Beijing people, it can also be called "Man Xiao".
Japanese have lived in Phrom Phong since a long time ago. Since Japanese companies made small-scale investments in Thailand in the 1970s, and have entered Thailand in large numbers in the past two years, Phrom Phong has become a veritable Japanese community, with a large number of Japanese restaurants and high-end apartments in the area.
At the same time, Phrom Phong is also an area where Thai dignitaries like to live, and many local Thai wealthy people and officials live here.
There is a less famous but very distinctive "building" in the Pengpeng area. It has a very domineering name - Queen Mother Heaven Building. If the height of the lightning rod is also counted, the building is 27.45 meters high, with five floors above ground and two floors underground.
There are many fruit paintings on the outer walls of the building, which are colorful and very realistic. Anyone who takes a look at them can guess what business the company in the building is doing.
This is the global headquarters of Wangmu Fruit Industry. In theory, most of the instructions from Wangmu Fruit Industry to its branches are issued from here. In fact, Rama Phubipon often travels around the world, and instructions are issued wherever he is.
Today, the fifth floor of the Queen Mother's Heaven Building is temporarily borrowed by the Hong Kong-Thailand Friendship Promotion Association, and people from PY Securities and Creativity Real Estate work here.
"President, the payment request email has been sent. I just received an email from the Lizardmen. They want us to buy Dusit Bangkok's goods in the secondary market."
After sending the email, Zhao Shixian's secretary Xie Yuying came to Zhao Shixian to report.
"Lizard Man? " Zhao Shixian asked suspiciously, "Which company is this?"
"The email is signed by the Lizardman Medical Team, a capital company, and the sender is Biggs." Xie Yuying said with shining eyes.
“Biggs from the Yale Endowment?”
"It's him."
"The capital company of the medical team is interesting." Zhao Shixian said thoughtfully: "I didn't receive any notification before. Yuying, is this a new company?"
"That should be it. I just checked the logs and found that the Lizardman's information was added to the email address book half an hour ago."
Zhao Shixian turned his chair and faced the window. "Bangkok Dusit Medical Services is the parent company of Bangkok Hospital. The medical team is planning to take over Bangkok Hospital, Ama."
As Zhao Shixian finished speaking, Ama, a trader sitting at a computer not far away, responded: "It is being adjusted... The real-time price is 325 baht, and the closing price yesterday was 325.3 baht. The turnover rate is not high."
"Take 10 hands."
[Thailand Stock Market SET: For stocks with a price of less than 500 baht per share, the minimum transaction volume is 1 lot = 100 shares; for stocks with a price of more than 500 baht per share, the minimum transaction volume is 1 lot = 50 shares. This will not be elaborated on later.]
Ama: “Done.”
"Pay attention for two days and collect information."
Ama: "OK."
Zhao Shixian stretched out his hand and tapped a few times on the keyboard, shouting, "Siam Cement, 50,000 hands."
"Done."
"National Petroleum, sell 8,000 lots."
“…”
Zhao Shixian gave instructions very frequently, and the traders kept typing on the keyboard, buying and selling continuously. Sometimes they would make a small profit, and sometimes they would suffer a small loss. With the ins and outs, the meager profits flowed into the account bit by bit.
The profit is really slim. With a principal of tens of millions of baht, the profit of a single transaction may be only tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, or even negative. When the stock market is not booming, profits are mined bit by bit.
Of course, Zhao Shixian is not concerned about these insignificant profits. She is getting familiar with SET and slowly getting to know each potential opponent and feeling out their operating style.
Compared with the tense but not solemn atmosphere at PY Securities, the atmosphere on the other side of the fifth floor, at Creativity Real Estate, seemed a bit solemn.
In the United States, the signs of an Internet investment boom have already emerged. Various websites represented by Real Online and Yahoo have attracted crazy pursuit from European and American funds. Various capitals have drawn funds from all over the world to speculate in Internet stocks.
Against this backdrop, European and American funds began to sell properties in Southeast Asia and exit with profits. This was a bit fatal, as Creativity Real Estate had not yet sold all of its properties, and still had more than 1,000 apartments in Thailand and Malaysia combined.
Malaysia is still okay, but Thailand has shown some bad signs. This is because Thailand's apartment market system is very special in terms of management. Since foreign customers are prohibited from purchasing detached houses, its apartments are actually facing foreign investors, and many of them are directly purchased by European and American funds.
Now that foreign investors are selling their properties and exiting, local residents simply cannot afford the high housing prices, which means there will be no one to take over and housing prices will inevitably plummet.
Jekapan, the person in charge of Creativity Real Estate in Thailand, was a little annoyed. He had been executing the strategy of not making the last penny, but who knew that those monsters in Europe and the United States would slip away so quickly. Now many companies are competing for the sales channels, and they will not let go once they get a customer.
After clicking the mouse and seeing the email reply agreeing to reduce the price, Jackapan breathed a sigh of relief and quickly picked up the phone to give the latest instructions.
Even if the remaining 400 apartments in Thailand are left in hand, Creativity Real Estate has already made a lot of money from its investment in Thailand, but if this is the case, things will be imperfect, which is not what Jekapan wants. He wants a perfect ending.
The real estate plan in Seoul is still in the early stage of collecting chips. Jackapan wants to compete for the position of person in charge of Seoul. You know, this not only involves a large dividend, but also has something to do with the subsequent promotion evaluation.
After finishing the call, Jekapan opened the two safes behind the big desk, took out the documents from them, and then read them one by one. The documents he had read were divided into two piles, one to be sent to Pattaya for archiving, and the other to be taken to the rooftop for destruction.
Creativity Real Estate not only purchased many apartments in Bangkok, but also bought many independent houses and construction land using the identities obtained as a Thai employee of Wangmu Fruit Industry and the drawer agreement. The information that needs to be destroyed is the part of the drawer agreement.
The house and land have already been sold, and keeping the information will only make it easier for others to find fault with you.
…
"Hello, is this Mr. Joachim Soth?"
In Berlin, Germany, Heinz, the president of Gaojue Satellite, came to a company called "ART+COM". After entering the office, he came in front of a curly-haired, bespectacled, thin man.
Joachim Soth heard the voice and looked at Heinz who was speaking. "It's me, who are you?"
"High-level satellite, Heinz."
Hearing Heinz's words, Joachim Soth stood up excitedly, "Mr. Heinz, are you here for TerraVision (terrain visualization system)?"
"Yes." Heinz smiled and said, "Would you like to buy me a cup of coffee?"
Shennong Nanliang has always had a plan - combining satellite remote sensing + cameras + large surveillance aircraft + drones + various sensing devices to establish an all-terrain, all-round, no-dead-angle agricultural visualization system.
The internal code name is "Prophet", which can be translated as prophet or seer. This system is designed to be able to observe every piece of land, every crop, and every animal of Shennong Nanliang in real time, and to explore and accumulate technology for unmanned agriculture that will only be realized in a long time.
In the foreseeable future, everything from the birth to the disappearance of Shennong Nanliang's animals and plants, from the fields, farms to slaughterhouses, and then to the dining table, can be tracked and observed through SPAM (microorganism, gene food chain).
If the Institute of Human Forbidden Zones makes breakthroughs in the study of bioelectric control and hippocampus, Shennong Nanliang's animal husbandry will enter the science fiction era. Raising livestock will be like raising idiots. When they are hungry, have diarrhea or are sick, they will sound the alarm, take the initiative to eat, go for a walk, and return to their nests. They can even queue up obediently and go to the slaughterhouse on their own initiative.
In vision, all this is beautiful, but to realize it we have to take it step by step.
Last year, ART+COM was commissioned by Berkom (the predecessor of Deutsche Telekom) to build a completely virtual 3D earth model, the TerraVision terrain visualization system, which can seamlessly navigate into buildings based on satellite images and geographic 3D data.
A few months ago, Nan Yi learned about this from a report email from Gaojue Communications Group. He was instantly shocked and shouted "Fuck!", isn't this the concept of Google Earth?
Then he remembered a piece of news he had read in a technology forum in Silicon Valley in his previous life, which said that the inspiration for Google Earth came from a German company, and that the patent was also purchased from this company after many years of litigation.
Nan Yi was not sure whether the company mentioned in the news was ART+COM, but at least before this, he had not heard anyone propose such a concept through public channels.
No matter whether it is successful or not, just give it a try. If there is any sign, just invest first. Anyway, we will not stop self-research. Even if ART+COM is not successful in the end, the inspiration gained will offset the investment loss.
Nan Yi didn't know that Heinz had already come to his door at this moment. He was holding a warm towel to his dirty butt, cleaning up after Nan Ruoqi who had just given him a soak.
After handling it, he threw the warm towel aside, put his hand under his nose and sniffed it, then smiled at Nan Ruoqi and said, "Mmm, it stinks, your poop stinks."
As if she understood Nan Yi's words, Nan Ruoqi raised her little hands in the air, grabbed at Nan Yi, and responded with a string of garbled words: "Daddy, ％￥#@..."
Nan Yi quickly went to the bathroom to wash his hands. After returning, he held Nan Ruoqi's little hand, brought it to his mouth and kissed it. After biting her hand enough, he picked through the pile of rattles and picked out a multi-color combination rattle that Nan Ruoqi had never played with before. When she started to shake it happily, he freed his hands to turn on the portable TV next to him.
Plug in the headphones, turn the volume up to the maximum, but don't wear them. Just put the headphones aside, listen to the faint sound, and watch the news on TV.
It was almost time for dinner. Emma brought Ding Yiku to visit Nan Yi. She was just passing by and was about to go to Yangcheng to take up the post of president of Wuwai Company, SGF's branch in China.
Due to the differences in dietary structure between the East and the West, in addition to adhering to the SGF service concept, Wuwai Company will be relatively independent of SGF, establish its own procurement and supply system, and explore its own model of serving customers.
Wuwai, beyond worldly things, as long as you are a Wuwai customer and are included in Wuwai's supply system, you don't have to worry about the food safety outside. I can sit back and watch Sudan turn red and cyanamide gather, and I will be content.
The first half of Wuwai’s development strategy in China will be similar to that of SGF in Europe, and it will also start from top-level customers. Nanque Shenzhai is more of an industrial docking station than a villa project, and many services will open up the first market gap in China there.
The second half is to develop mid-range customers. The population base is there, and in a few years the number of people who subjectively and have the conditions to pay attention to healthy eating will definitely not decrease. Wuwai cannot hide deep in the clouds like SGF in Europe and the United States, but must sink down and connect with the demographic dividend.
It should be said that the reason why many of Nan's industries are divided into China and outside China is that Nan Yi has marketing considerations. Models that are effective outside China may not be effective in China, and strategic adjustments must be made to fit the characteristics of China's demographic dividend market.
When Nan Yi entertained Emma, he mainly talked about business and did not dare to talk much about personal matters. He was just concerned about Ding Yiku's future school arrangements. Emma's idea was to take Ding Yiku to Yangcheng and find a school for him to attend there.
The morning after Emma left, Nan Yi received a call from Sophie Marceau in Hollywood, saying that she was attending the celebration party for the official launch of "Titanic".
Several investors and Cameron's team were in a restaurant. The investors who had just determined their investment shares sat together and drank and chatted.
