1855 United States Tycoon

In fact, after the war, the overall economic situation was not good. Many industries have been affected by insufficient demand. However, there is a feature of capital, that is, it can never be honestly idle and sleep a long time. At any time, the funds will look for a way to make a lot of money, and if they can't find it, they will look for a way to suicide.

The so-called road to suicide refers to all kinds of speculation. Marx once sharply satirized that there is one thing that capitalists cannot always change, just like another member of a family that the Virgin particularly likes. Intermediate production links to directly obtain profits. One of the most typical manifestations is to play with concepts, to stir up things that have no value at all, or things that are not so valuable at all.

For example, as early as 1636 (Europeans are cows, when we were still in the dynasty, Europeans played this), the Dutch used tulips to play the first financial bubble in recorded history. At the time in the Netherlands, some tulip treasures were sold at unusually high prices, and the wealthy were vying to display the latest and rarest varieties in their gardens. By the early stage of the 1730s, this fashion led to a classic speculative mania. People are no longer buying tulips for their intrinsic value or for viewing purposes, but expect their prices to rise indefinitely and profit from it. In 1635, a single tulip variety called Childer was sold in 1615 florins (Dutch currency unit). If you want to figure out what the value of such a sum of money was in the Dutch economy in the early 17th century, you only need to know that 4 bulls (the equivalent of a trailer) cost 480 florins and 1,000 pounds (approximately 454). Kg) cheese is also only 120 florin. However, the price of tulips continued to rise. In the second year, a rare species of tulip (there were only two in the Netherlands at that time) was sold at a price of 4,600 florins. In addition, the buyer had to pay an extra A brand new carriage, two gray horses and a complete set of harnesses.

In fact, everyone knows that this kind of flowering garlic is not worth so much money at all, and all the guys who are willing to pay such a high price are fools. But they all believe that everything will be scarce in this world, but fools will never be scarce. Although it is foolish for me to buy such a flowering garlic at such a high price, I believe that I can always find it. A stupid idiot who was more stupid than me, and then sold it to him at a higher price. This is the stupid psychology in the financial bubble. You can see its shadow in various financial bubbles since then. Even until the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, Chinese people still played various stories about Clivia and China orchid.

Of course, this kind of bubble always bursts, and then it will get higher and higher until it is so high that there is no fool who can take the plate, or some adult with ulterior motives pretends to be a child and yells "King." After wearing nothing", there will be a plummet, and then a large amount of funds completed suicide in such a plummet, and flowed into the pockets of individual guys.

Nowadays, various industries are not very profitable, so as long as a certain industry has a little positive sign, um, a lot of hot money that can't find a way out, it will definitely swarm, and treat this industry as a blooming garlic stir-fry. stand up. And now, well, the oil extraction industry is just such a flowering garlic.

Think about it, this requires drilling a hole in the ground, and then endless wealth will automatically emerge from the ground. This is simply..."Dorothea, do you know why John suddenly raised the purchase price of oil and started buying oil in large quantities at a price of fourteen dollars a barrel?" Scrooge is continuing his "Dorothy" Ya develops a plan".

"The use of oil is only limited to kerosene for lighting lamps and lubricating oil for machinery. Well, maybe asphalt should be added. In short, the quantity of this stuff is enough. It is not worth so much money at all." Dorothy Ya bit the pencil in her hand and said, "The last time I heard you negotiate with Mr. Rockefeller, you drove the road roller and told people that there was a space left on me, and you couldn't get up to the negotiation. Now , The goal of his action must be to crush them with a road roller, that is to say, he wants to bankrupt those guys, or be acquired by him at a low price. This must be his goal!"

"Very good, continue to deduce!" Scrooge encouraged her.

"He first raises the price, and then, those oil wells will produce crazy, and then as long as you have sufficient funds, you can raise the price again, and then, um, some people will think that hoarding oil will make money, and then, just Other people will join in. Then the price of oil will get higher and higher. At that time, we will throw out the oil in our hands, and then the whole market price will fall. At that time, every one who has oil in hand People will worry about whether the oil will fall in their hands. They will fight to sell the oil as quickly as possible, so that the price will fall faster, and this will stimulate them to sell the oil at a faster rate. .Then the entire price will collapse. During this period, those oil wells must have increased their efforts to produce, and they will definitely add a lot of oil to wait for the price to rise. With the collapse, all these things will be sold. Not going out, then, what else can they do but sell the oil field quickly? Am I right?" Dorothea asked.

"Basically good, but you forgot that there are other refineries." Scrooge continued to guide.

"Well, when oil prices are skyrocketing, as long as we maintain the prices of kerosene and lubricating oil, these refineries will have no profit at all. They have been suppressed and they are out of breath. We have to sell the factory to us. It’s just...just that way we’ll cause a lot of people to go bankrupt. Is this really good?" Dorothea was very happy before, but somehow suddenly it was superfluous. The concept of right and wrong has emerged again. Dorothea shook her head, as if she wanted to shake these superfluous views of right and wrong from her head. Then he said to himself a little bit:

"It's a shame not to make so much money... Anyway, it's a matter of time before they are crushed. If they go bankrupt earlier, get up again sooner. Besides, they are all a group of North Koreans. It’s us who digs the hole, but it’s them who jumped down. What do you care about us? By the way, um, it’s like this!"

"I heard that the boss is going to drill another oil well recently?" An oil worker asked another worker.

"Yes, William, haven't you heard? Standard Oil recently increased the purchase price of crude oil to sixteen dollars a barrel! Now this thing is profitable. The boss now has only four wells, how can the output be enough? So? Isn't it normal to drill more wells?" the worker replied.

"But I saw that there seems to be a lot of them sold? Are they all stored in the oil storage tank over there?"

"Then who knows? Maybe the boss thinks that oil prices can continue to rise."

Loyle drove a donkey cart with three full barrels of crude oil on it and drove towards his home.

"Emma, ​​come out and help me get the crude oil down." Unloading the donkey, Loyle shouted to his own wife.

"Why are you buying these things?" his wife asked inexplicably, "what's the use of these things? Why are you still buying so many?"

"You women are just ignorant." Loyle said, "You don't know, the price of this thing is going up soaring! It was 15 dollars a barrel the day before yesterday, and now it has risen to 17 dollars a barrel! Law, these three barrels of oil can rise by 9 dollars every two days! Much better than going out to work! Okay, stop talking nonsense and help me move things down!"

Together, the couple lifted a barrel of oil, put it on the ground, and then prepared to lift the second barrel. At this time, they saw the neighbor Carl came back in a donkey cart with four barrels of oil in the cart.

"Hey, Carl, where did you get it? How much is a bucket?" Neuer shouted.

"Mr. Hurd's oil well, it took a lot of effort to get someone to buy it. It cost seventeen dollars and five cents a barrel." Old Karl replied triumphantly. It has risen to seventeen dollars and ten cents!"

"If you keep going up like this, it won't take long for you to have the money to show your son's legs." Neuer said, "I know Dr. Huck. He opened an orthopedic clinic in Lancaster, technology Not bad."

"Thank you, but once the price rises like this, I can take him to a big hospital instead of going to a private clinic. I won’t get his legs crooked again." Old Karl laughed, "If you make more money," I will take him to Germany to see orthopedics!"

Old Karl was a German immigrant, and he always had an unreasonable trust in German medical skills.

After speaking with old Carl, Neuer continued to move these oil drums down with his wife, and discharged them carefully.

"Where to put it? Is it in the yard?" Emma asked.

"That's how it works! I don't know how many people want to buy this but can't buy it. Put it in the yard, can you sleep well?" Neuer asked.

"Then we should move it into the house and put it next to our bed, so it's safe!" Emma said again.

Neuer thought for a while, and said, "That's it, put it on our bedside. Well, yes, put our old-fashioned musket with bullets and put it on the bedside! Hey...just a little longer, just It’s increased by ten cents, and it won’t take long for us to earn a donkey back."

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