The Merchants of Zion by William Stamp Page B

were taking out to finance their operations. A lot of Terminus because yeah, they were the biggest, but we were long on a bunch of the little guys too. Now, with each and every one of them staring down potentially multi-trillion dollar lawsuits, all our prudent investments were suddenly worthless. So what did we do? We did what any sane investor would do and dumped our inventory on anyone who would take it, sold off any stocks we had in these companies, the works. 
    "Of course, anyone smarter than a cucumber—so everyone but the big mutual funds—did the same thing, which made it even worse. Boom! Pandemonium in the stock market. Credit crunch. Old-fashioned bank runs. You couldn't borrow ten bucks from your granny, and the government pretended it was helpless. The biggest financial crisis in the history of mankind and that's the moment they get rectally curious? Who the fuck cares about deficits when the entire country is falling apart? You might convince me the ATE was an accident to begin with, but there's no way in hell they didn't orchestrate everything after that.”
    “Who is they, exactly? The government?”
    “I'm certain the court consulted with the sovereign wealth funds, probably some of the bigger hedge funds. The people who run Liberty Bell, basically. They engineered a catastrophe so gargantuan that it wouldn't just bring down the economy, it would take the government with it. And now, like how Harvard or Princeton are hedge funds with universities on the side, we have a hedge fund that happens to run a nation.”
    “So you're reading these books to piece together a globe-spanning conspiracy of how a conglomerate of shadowy, international financiers engineered the Panic so they could take over the government?” I asked. “And even if it's true—a galactic if—what's it matter to you? Are you going to make your founder's million by writing about it, exposing the conspiracy? What happened to real estate?”
    His eyes narrowed and he rubbed his chin—a considered response to a serious question. He either didn't know I was mocking him, was mocking me back, or didn't care. Or it was some combination of the three, and his response possessed levels of subtlety of which I didn't think he was capable.
    “I can't prove it, and if I could they'd scoop me. There's a good chance they'd take you too. But if I can figure out their plan I can make some money. The savvy investor knows he's Odysseus, not Aeolus. You don't try to direct the market, you sail with it.”
    “What's that have to do with your real estate thingy?”
    “Not much. Real estate is dead. I need the cash I have tied up in it though, so I can move on to something bigger and better. When that project starts moving I'm selling my share to some sucker. Interested?”
    I ignored him. “And the list you gave to Ruth? You don't really need their help to get those licenses?”
    “No I do,” he protested. “I'm laying a foundation. A little thing now, nothing more than a favor here and there really, for a small payout. Give them a taste, then I have the contact and some trust. It's about networking now so I don't have to play catch-up later. If you had an ounce of business sense you'd understand.”
    “Look I have to get ready for work,” I said, frustrated. James was sowing magic beans, every green shoot a new scam. His plans were grandiose, the imagined payoffs enormous, all the while requiring from him the barest amount of work. Because he couldn't stay grounded, his belief in this conspiracy would inevitably entail some harebrained scheme, which would inevitably fail, which would inevitably end with him bankrupt and eking out one more month of free lodging—promising his next plan would be the one that worked. He thought life was a movie starring James Newsom, the heroic individual who would Figure It Out and Uncover the Truth, Changing the Course of History while Striking It Rich.
    “Before you go,” he said. “What're you up to this