Chapter 92: The Great Depression (Part Eleven)
Translator: Etern, Kim_Guo
Huang Xuan spent the following day at the Beta factory, watching the banknotes continuously come out of the machine, he even felt that the noise sounded pleasing.
The printers that had been retrofitted by Rolin still looked and worked the same, but the banknotes were real. To make it easier to use the money, Huang Xuan asked Rolin to make the notes look used. This was normally a simple operation, but asking Rolin to do it costed him around $3,000,000 USD worth of energy.
By a rough estimate, Rolin had already used $25,000,000 USD since they had arrived at P101. If it wasn’t for the light oil they had purchased before, if they just depended on the electrolytic aluminum plants, then they wouldn’t even have enough energy to return home. Luckily, its reached the time for them to harvest their returns.
Beta Factory printed $15,000,000 USD worth of banknotes overnight. Even before the great depression, this amount was equivalent to half of Ford’s yearly profits, enough to put him on the list of richest people in America.
Huang Xuan first put around 20 kg of green bills, around $2,000,000 USD or so, into a duffel bag. Afterwards, he put the rest of the banknotes into the Plane Passage, then he turned off the machines and left the workshop. He gave the duffel bag to Hans and said, “Chase Manhattan Bank.”
In the lobby of the bank, Joseph immediately noticed the tall Hans and the bag in his hand.
“How may I help you?” Joseph asked while holding his white gloved hand with fingers cross near his waist. He led Huang Xuan into the VIP room. With a deposit of 600,000 dollars, he could use this room at anytime.
There was only the three of them inside this delicately decorated room. At this time, there wouldn’t be anyone monitoring the room, so Huang Xuan took the bag from Hans, opened it and said, “Please count the money inside, I would like to deposit all of it into your bank.”
With only a quick glance, Joseph knew that his goal for the month had just been achieved. He quickly called for his deputy to come in, refilled coffee for Huang Xuan and said, “Please wait for a moment, our employees will be done counting soon.”
Huang Xuan nodded apathetically. “I want to meet with Mr. Rockefeller, John Rockefeller.”
“I will pass on your request for you,” Joseph responded and walked away.
Huang Xuan was confident that Rockefeller would meet with him. $2,000,000 USD was a lot of money, if you must compare, it would be equivalent to $100,000,000 USD in 2001. Especially in 1931, when liquid assets was in short supply, this infusion of cash could be seen as rain after a drought. During the 1933 bank runs, many banks closed due to lack of liquidity. Two years prior to that, warning signs could already be seen.”
“Hans, go get the design from the car.” Huang Xuan said as he gently stirred his coffee.
“Alright.” Hans looked at the employees in the room, called over a bodyguard and whispered a few words. Afterwards, he stood behind Huang Xuan again.
Rockefeller Jr. spent a lot of time on Chase Manhattan Bank’s business, today wasn’t any different. After he received the message from Joseph, he quickly finished up and went downstairs. He shook hands with Huang Xuan and said, “I heard you are from China? It is a beautiful place.”
In the 1930’s, China actually wasn’t that good, the golden age of national capitalism had just ended. However, it gave Huang Xuan a favourable impression that Rockefeller had started the conversation with that.
“Mr. Rockefeller, I know you are very busy, so I will cut to the chase. I heard that you have invested in Pan Am. Is it true?”
“Yes.” Rockefeller poured some whiskey for himself and added, “Are you interested in investing in Pan Am as well?”
During the great depression, Pan Am was one of the few large corporations that wasn’t losing money. By 1931, there was more and more people who wanted to invest in Pan Am. Naturally, Rockefeller thought that Huang Xuan was thinking of the same thing.
To his surprise, Huang Xuan shook his head. Huang Xuan took the designs from Hans’ arms, opened them and said, “You must be curious to why Mr. Sloan and Ford both have connections with me.”
“A little bit.” Rockefeller acknowledged.
“It is because of this.” While speaking, Huang Xuan opened the design and handed it over to Joseph. Standing beside Rockefeller, he said: “Are you interested in it?”
“This is… the design of a plane?”
“Yes.” answered Huang Xuan. Then he smiled, rolled up the design, and then passed it over to Rockefeller and said: “If you are interested, you can come find me. ” Then he looked over at Joseph. The manager quickly reacted and took the deposit receipt from his deputy. He then handed it to Huang Xuan with both hands and said: “The total was $2,084,700 USD, thank you for using to Chase Manhattan Bank.”
“Thank you.” Huang Xuan took another look at Rockefeller and left with a smile on his face. Actually, he wasn’t really trying to sell the design to Rockefeller. He didn’t have enough time for that, also, now that he could print money, doing business with Rockefeller was just wasting time. Offering the design only had one advantage, as long as he could keep Rockefeller interested, then Rockefeller wouldn’t dig too deeply into the mysterious and large amount of money deposited into his account.
As Huang Xuan walked down the bank steps, his expression became serious. Take a deep breath, he got in the car and said to Hans, “Let’s go see Mr. Hammer.”
Even in America, Hammer was a legend, he was called the King of Golden Ideas. This Russian American had gotten involved in many different industries, from breeding, pencils, medicine, art collectibles, and even to oil. In every industry he was able to earn a lot, and in the collectibles industry, which Huang Xuan cared the most about, Hammer similarly had an amazing amount of experience.
In 1922, Hammer brought his younger brother (an Antique Appraiser) to Russia to look for Russian Artifacts, an area not yet covered by other people. They grew their collection bit by bit, and arranged their villa in Moscow like a museum. One day, an American antiques dealer called E. Sarkozy came to visit their villa. When he saw the interior of the villa, his eyes almost popped out. Hammer got inspired by this, so he shipped most of his collection back to America after he paid a 15% export duty. The collection would be handled by Sarkozy’s trading company. After Sarkozy went bankrupt, Hammer bought his shares of the company.
During the great depression, from 1931, Hammer did something that surprised many people. He bravely started to sell art works at the counter of department stores and was extremely successful. This was the most severe depression in American history, yet Hammer profited millions of dollars. And the place that Huang Xuan was going to now, was Hammer’s department store.
At a time where most goods were being affected by heavy deflation, art works was one of the few types that was able to keep or increase its value. Due to this fact, Hammer’s department store was one of New York’s most popular places.
After Huang Xuan got of of the car, the busy mall gave him the feeling that he was watching a movie from the 1990’s.
The gentlemen were wearing top hats, holdings sticks and walking by politely, arm in arm with their ladies. The small parking lot was filled with all kinds of cars, as if a vintage car exhibition was being held. The 33-year Armand Hammer was in a tight-fitted suit with a stand-up collar. He circulated around the lobby and greeted every customer near him. He noticed Huang Xuan’s arrival immediately.
When Hammer saw a yellow-skinned man with two bodyguards, he recalled his experience in Russia. He handed over his work to the manager, walked over quickly, and said slowly in english: “Hello, my name is Armand Hammer, the owner of this Art Dealership, is there anything I can help you with?”
“I think so.” Huang Xuan replied with an East-coast accent. He had picked up quite a few slangs while living in America these last few days.
Huang Xuan walked further in and looked around at the art works. He then told Rolin: “Take a look and find out what isn’t available in P112. It needs to be valuable and unique, understand?”
“No problem.” Rolin was now used to this type of searching and started to work right away.
“I heard that you have the most complete collection of Russian Royal Antiques, so I came to take a look.” Huang Xuan told Hammer.
Like with every change in regime, the fall of the House of Romanov ended the Tsar’s collections. By the order of Lenin, all art works and collectibles were sent to Moscow. In a dark storeroom inside the arsenal of the Kremlin, some treasures had disappeared and non one knew where they were. The willow chests that held these treasures were completely intact, in-fact they were still sealed and was guarded by the army. However, when Stalin took power, all the effort Lenin made to preserve the cultural heritage of Russia was erased. To obtain economic support from the Western powers, Stalin even traded the royal relics. In 1927, the new regime started to take out piece of treasure to have them appraised, and eventually sold to the west. In their eyes, using these treasures that represented decay to trade for economic support was a natural thing.
Sadly, Russian relics were undervalued from the beginning, especially its art value. Just as Chinese calligraphy and paintings were mostly appreciated by the Chinese, the value of Russian art works, especially their cultural value, was mostly only appreciated by the Russians.
In 1931, Hammer took thousands of Russian Art Relics to New York, as he intended to sell them for the new regime. Although he did well, compared with the value of these items 70 years later, the price was undervalued by up to 100 times.
Of course, Hammer didn’t know about all of this. He was already happy that someone wanted to buy Russian art, not to mention someone who looked like they wanted to make a bulk purchase.
“Let’s talk inside.” Hammer was insightful, he felt this young man was willing to spend more money than anyone else present.
Huang Xuan smiled and nodded.
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