The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 309

Before 08, Amerikan or Europe and the United States as a whole were far from being able to compare with later generations in terms of both intensity and stringency of financial supervision.

After the 08 financial crisis, Amerikan introduced a comprehensive financial regulatory bill, the "Doby-Frank Act", which restricted banks' use of their own funds for transactions and strengthened supervision of systemic risks and financial products.

If there was such a bill now, Madoff would be exposed immediately.

Later, 18 years later, under the leadership of Jin Mao, a large number of provisions of the "Dobby Frank Act" were reduced because they believed that these provisions were unfavorable to small and medium-sized financial institutions. The result was that in 2023, Silicon Valley Bank and even other banks were triggered. of bankruptcy.

Therefore, risk control is the lifeline of the financial industry, and bad rules are better than no rules.

Back to the present, compared with later generations, it is not an exaggeration to describe the current financial industry as chaotic.

Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that users like Paul used their savings to purchase Madoff financial products on Baidu and X.com channels. Many users obtained loans with interest rates of around 5% from banks and then purchased Madoff financial products.

With the idea of ​​​​earning interest differentials, they borrowed heavily and increased their leverage.

The bank did not stop this behavior at all, even if they knew that the customer's loan purpose was not for consumption as written when they applied, the bank did not care.

Because for the bank, as long as I complete my performance, that's fine.

The whole chain turned.

In the first year, some local Amerikan consumers took up their leverage and became Madoff's customers. In the second year, the first phase of the financial product was successfully redeemed, and there was no obstacle to the user's exit during this period.

In the second year, it was not just consumers in the Americen region who purchased Madoff products. Many European users purchased this product through various channels, through their friends in American or intermediary companies. Financial product.

During this period, supervision turned a blind eye to this behavior, while Baidu and X.com watched the numbers on their books increase.

The fundraising scale of Baidu Pay Madoff Financial Products increased sixfold from 50 billion in the first phase to 300 billion in the second phase the following year.

If X.com is included, Madoff's funds from retail investors will be close to 500 billion US dollars.

The growth rate is so fast that top scammers like Madoff are a little panicked. Money comes too easily from the Internet.

Baidu's rapid growth in the field of electronic payment has brought about a surge in its stock price, and its market share has successfully surpassed X.com, becoming the electronic payment software second only to WeChat Pay and NewPay.

In terms of the total number of customer balances, Baidu Pay even lags far behind WeChat.

Such rapid growth has brought huge profits to Baidu's financial director George. Madoff pays him nearly US$3 million from his personal account every year.

Baidu executives and the board of directors looked at such beautiful data and applied to expand the scale of cooperation with Madoff.

Why can it only be sold once a year?We should sell two issues a year, then sell one issue every month.

Madoff himself refused. The amount of funds was too huge. He was no longer worried about the depletion of liquidity in his hands. The only thing he was worried about was that his scam would be exposed because of the huge funds.

In order to avoid the scam being exposed, Madoff, who had never done any financial operations before, even began to purchase some stocks in the capital market for hedging operations.

The scale is close to US$500 billion, and the upper limit for a single customer is US$100 million.

From this perspective, we need 5 fully qualified customers. In fact, many European customers purchased Madoff's financial products by signing contracts with Amerikan intermediaries.

So Madoff was siphoning money from around the world.

Of course, there are also Chinese customers buying.

Why do European customers buy it?Because the European monetary policy is looser than that of Amerikan, the cost of money is lower than that of Amerikan, and their leverage is higher than that of Amerikan.

Americen individual customers obtain loans from banks, and the cost of funds is between 5 and 7%, while the cost of funds for European customers is between 3 and 4.

According to another data, between 2000 and 2007, Ameliken's household credit debt increased from 98% of personal disposable income to 136%.

The English's data increased from 120% to 180%.

Why did the financial crisis in 08 become so severe, from the five European pig countries to the whole of Europe, and then to Amerikan itself? It was because the Europeans had looser currencies, pulled more levers, and experienced rapid credit growth and asset price bubbles. quick.

The money is so easy to come by that NewPay is jealous.

There are senior executives within NewPay watching their competitors make this money, but they cannot make it themselves.

Yu'e Bao opened the era of Internet finance, and the cooperation between Madoff and Baidu took Internet finance to the extreme.

Products with 10% returns come first, and Yu’e Bao with 2 to 3 points is not worth mentioning.

Baidu can get 2% of the income from Madoff's financial products, which means that the annual income from this alone is about 6 million US dollars.

NewPay executives believe that Madoff initially negotiated cooperation with them. With NewPay's channels and user base, once they started selling Madoff's financial products, their scale could far exceed that of Baidu.

"Peter, I think we should also cooperate with Madoff. Baidu is coming in force, and they have already completed the accumulation of original customers with the help of Madoff's financial products.

Not only is the number of Baidu Pay customers growing rapidly, exceeding 500 million, but offline payments are also expanding rapidly.

With the funds deposited by Madoff's financial products and the interest income after Madoff's interest settlement, most customers choose to continue to put it in Baidu payment accounts, and then complete transactions through Baidu.

Equivalent to using Madoff's financial products, Baidu has customers and substantial payment activities. They are also discussing cooperation with a large number of various offline companies, and are also rapidly spreading offline, which means they will also With offline payment scenarios.

We need to be wary of this opponent, and we need to pay attention to this opponent. Baidu is different from the competitors faced by NewPay in the past.

I think we should work with Madoff, too. "Noel Sacasa said.

He is an executive who joined NewPay after it became successful, and is a top expert specially poached from the International Monetary Fund.

Peter Thiel looked at the other party with sharp eyes: "Sacasa, don't say you don't know there are risks in Madoff's financial products.

Once liquidity dries up, you should know what it means. "

At the moment, even in the wildest conjecture, they did not think that Madoff Investment Company was a complete scam. When they realized something was wrong, they just thought that Madoff had done arbitrage in it.

Because he wanted to maintain his unbeaten myth of an annual return rate of more than 12%, Madoff may have done some illegal operations and was at risk of liquidity depletion. Peter Thiel, or most people who doubted Madoff, thought so.Sacasa crossed his arms over his chest, looked Peter Thiel in the eyes and said, "I know.

Peter, yes, Madoff may have risks, but it is impossible to run a business without taking risks.

An outside director asked on the board of directors before whether we could cooperate with Madoff. Your answer at that time was that our position in the electronic payment field will not be shaken. We are far ahead of our competitors and we need to adopt a sound corporate approach. Business strategy.

These are correct, and I agreed with your point of view at the time.

But things are different now. Baidu already has the most critical elements of electronic payment. Unlike X.com, Baidu, which controls the Internet entrance, has the best traffic.

Weibo was sold to Microsoft. WeChat has its own payment software and it is impossible to attract traffic for us.

Baidu has formed a positive cycle after having all the elements in place, the snowball has begun to roll, and the gap between them and us will only get closer and closer.

What we need to do is stop the snowball from rolling, and working with Madoff is the best way.

I know there are risks. We can write the risks clearly in the electronic agreement signed with the user, including clearly pointing out the risks in the product introduction.

If customers still choose to purchase Madoff's financial products, if something unexpected happens in the future, this is the customer's own choice and has nothing to do with NewPay.

It was okay for us not to take risks before, but now it’s time to take risks.

Peter, you are in the mall, not in school. Don't always hold on to the academic mentality. "

Sacasa was referring to Peter Thiel's previous teaching career at Stanford.

Peter Thiel pressed his hands down, indicating that he needed to think.

He was wondering what Zhou Xin would do if he encountered such a situation.

Without Zhou Xin, Peter Thiel would have been one of the earliest founders of PayPal, ousting Musk from the position of PayPal CEO, becoming the CEO of PayPal himself, allowing Musk to try unprecedented failures, so much so that he immediately In public interviews, Schick stated that he wanted to assassinate Peter Thiel at that time.

Of course, because Confinity is now merging with NewPay instead of X.com, Peter Thiel and Musk are still good friends.

Peter Thiel will also become Facebook's earliest investor.

Therefore, Peter Thiel's sense of smell is definitely sharp enough, and his methods are far from Sacasa's so-called academic. He has never wanted to cooperate with Madoff, which is essentially a feeling.

The so-called interest rates are too high, concerns about Madoff's liquidity risk, and worries about affecting NewPay's reputation. These are the reasons and the obvious reasons for the decision.

In a room with only Sacasa and Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel asked about his inner feelings, which was essentially a kind of disgust. As a German, Peter Thiel subconsciously disliked Madoff, a Jew. and disgust.

“No, I stand by my ideas and if you object, you can convene a board meeting to oppose the decision I make.

As long as you can get Newman's support, or Newman's abstention. "Peter Thiel decided to follow his feelings.

Although this feeling made no sense, he had always followed his feelings in the past, and this time was no exception.

Noelle Sacasa said with anger on his face: "Peter, you will regret it!" Then he pushed the door open and walked out.

Sacasa said nothing more, because he knew that when Peter Thiel said he was looking for Newman, there would be no point in arguing about the matter.

Compared with Peter Thiel, Sacasa joined NewPay for a limited time and had no interaction with Zhou Xin, who returned to China.

Coupled with the unconditional approval of Peter Thiel by the new exercise representative Warren Jensen on the board of directors in the past week, he realized that it was impossible to get this thing done.

Peter Thiel watched Sacasa leave without sitting down for a long time. He didn't know whether the decision he made was right or wrong. Only time could give him an answer.

Zhou Xin was unaware of the controversy taking place within NewPay, and would have supported Peter Thiel if he had known about it.

Because Baidu and

And when this thunder explodes in the future, NewPay will become the absolute monopoly of electronic payment software on the market.

After entering 2005, there was no breakthrough in technology, and Mphone was still unable to launch the next generation of products. However, the smartphone chip developed by Xinxin Technology was officially launched.

“I am very happy that so many mobile phone brands are attending Xinxin Technology’s press conference today, and I can introduce Xinxin Technology’s upcoming chip products to you here.

I only joined Xinxin Technology last year. Before that, I was mainly responsible for Xiaomi mobile phones. After the new president returned to China, he told me that the future press conferences will be left to you. Mr. Hu is old and giving a speech on stage is a bit physically demanding for him.

I also like to speak in front of crowds, so I took over this job.

Let me introduce myself to you all. My name is Yu Chengdong. Although I am introducing Xinxin Technology’s products to you this time, I am responsible for Xiaomi’s mobile phone business within Xinxin Group. I am a peer and direct competitor of you all. "

Yes, at Zhou Xin's suggestion, Xinxin Technology poached Yu Chengdong from Huawei. At this time, he was only a middle-level employee at Huawei. The person in charge of Xiaomi mobile phones was obviously a better opportunity for him.

Therefore, after a lot of work, he joined Xinxin last year.

For Zhou Xin, it is better to use the raw than the familiar. These well-known figures have proven their abilities in the future, so there is no need to discover talents from unfamiliar people.

Zhou Xin has always insisted on trying not to mess around and taking advantage of good vision.

After Yu Dazui finished speaking, the camera showed Zhou Xin sitting in the audience. Thunderous applause broke out from the audience. This applause was for Zhou Xin.

The news of Zhou Xin's return to China had already been exposed at the last Shenhai Financial Summit, and this time it was just another verification.

At the press conference, which was attended only by mobile phone manufacturers and the media, hundreds of people applauded, creating the momentum of thousands of troops.

There are a lot of analyzes on Zhou Xin's return to China on Suspicion, and the most commonly mentioned meaning is: "Because Zhou Xin's status and historical achievements have the same role as a totem, his return means he is optimistic about the future development of China's economy. "

"I'm not going to give in. The two chips we are launching this time are named Yanque and Honghu respectively."

　I didn't get up in the morning, so I had to change it at night.

　　To be honest, the scale of Madoff's financial products of RMB 500 billion seems conservative to Crow. If it were Amerikan before 08, if there were similar products, they should be able to achieve a higher scale.
　　
　
(End of this chapter)