I’m in Hollywood - Chapter 1193

[Chapter 1159: The Eve of the Storm]

Eric asked back: “Which city do you think is suitable?”

“Chicago,” replied Paul Albert, apparently prepared, “similar to Manchester, Chicago is also an industrial city. At the same time, due to the gradual decline of heavy industry and the increase in unemployment, the city is very class divided, with Massive poor class.”

“Then Chicago,” Eric nodded in approval, and added: “In addition, in terms of script, I hope this story can have a stronger dramatic conflict, and struggle with a strong contrast between morality and reality. So, you need It focuses on highlighting the contrasting and contradictory personalities of the characters in the script, so that the audience has a complex emotion that is hateful and pitiful, even lovely.”

In the previous “Shameless”, the biggest feeling to Eric was that even if life is a puddle of shit, it is worth continuing to persevere, but after persevering, life is still a puddle of shit.

Speaking of which, most TV dramas after showtime TV’s style matures basically feel like this.

Countless men and women run blindfolded in scenes of flamboyant or violent uninhibited life. They seem enviable, but they are always on the verge of collapse. Occasionally some calm and warm, but it indicates that a bigger collapse is coming.

The audience was tortured to death in the process, but they couldn’t stop.

Although the production plan of showtime TV’s original three TV series was cut off at one time, Eric only planned to let the TV station launch the TV series “Shameless” for the time being. filling.

The main work of showtime in the second half of the year is still on the rearrangement of the entire TV station program schedule and the formulation of a new marketing plan.

The project was formalized after Eric spoke with Shameless screenwriter Paul Albert.

The showtime production team and Paul Albert traveled to Chicago in the next few days to conduct field trips for script revisions and select suitable locations.

On the other hand, although the negotiation with Eric broke up unhappily, Damen, as expected, was unwilling to give up the equity subscription contract for nothing.

Therefore, Microsoft did not immediately turn against Yahoo, and Microsoft President Steve Ballmer, who had been appointed as Gates’ successor, quickly took over the negotiation and began to continue to contact Yahoo.

But while both sides kept a low profile, news of Microsoft’s imminent acquisition of a 30% stake in Yahoo spread quickly as July rolled around and became the hottest topic in the new tech world, which has entered its final frenzy.

The industry does not know the details of the forward equity subscription contract, but it can roughly make guesses.

Moreover, a considerable part of the media will focus on this topic on whether the US Department of Justice and the Federal Exchange Commission will approve the equity transaction.

After all, Microsoft’s monopoly on desktop operating systems is already very serious, but Yahoo is the company with the largest market share in the emerging Internet industry.

If the industrial giants spanning these two fields join forces, a stronger monopoly will definitely be formed.

While U.S. Justice Department officials quickly said at a news conference that they would closely monitor a possible deal between Microsoft and Yahoo, the two new tech giants, and even intervene or stop it if necessary, there is no doubt that AOL and Time Warner have succeeded The precedent for the merger is before. Although Microsoft has been burdened with a series of antitrust investigations, the industry generally believes that the transaction between Microsoft and Yahoo is likely to actually happen.

As a result, relevant speculation was quickly reflected in the stock prices of the two giants.

Corporate mergers usually have a very obvious pattern. Once the news of a possible acquisition comes out, the stock price of the party that initiates the acquisition often falls.

The stock price of the acquired company will generally rise sharply.

However, because it is on the cusp of the most turbulent wave of new technology, Microsoft’s stock price has not fallen, but the growth rate has slowed down a lot, but Yahoo’s stock price has been pulled up rapidly.

In the first week of July, within five trading days from July 5 to July 9, Yahoo’s stock price continued to rise by 27%, and its market value broke through the 200 billion mark from $182.5 billion before the opening on July 5. , eventually reaching $231.7 billion.

By comparison, Microsoft’s shares rose just 3.9% over the same week.

But in the end, the market value of $588 billion will still throw off Cisco, which is closely behind.

At the same time, the Nasdaq also reached a high of 4,911 points when it closed on July 9.

As long as there is no accident, the Nasdaq is destined to break through the 5,000-point mark next week.

In the face of the madness of the entire technology stock market, although some sober investors who resisted the temptation began to sell and leave, it is clear that most investors in the market have completely lost their minds.

After all, just like the stock price of Yahoo, it only takes a week to invest $100 million, and a 27% increase in the stock price is enough to bring investors a huge gain of $27 million. The realized profit target will only take a week to reach, and how could investors who have been completely immersed in the technology stock bubble unable to extricate themselves give up willingly.

Even, not only professional investors, due to the strong temptation of stock profits in the new technology market, in recent months, there has been an obvious upsurge of national stock speculation in the United States, which is a rare occurrence in the entire North American history.

You must know that although most middle-class Americans can be regarded as investors, due to the different consumption patterns of residents, Americans hold very little cash on weekdays, and their investments are basically indirect through pension and other models. invest.

Under normal circumstances, only the wealthy with excess cash in their hands will make separate financial investments.

But now, countless ordinary Americans have begun to raise funds in various ways, and then rushed to the Nasdaq market without hesitation.

In order to obtain more profits in the short term, many rich people have used investment leverage on a large scale to expand their capital as much as possible.

Due to the rapid increase in the trading activity of the Nasdaq market, the Clover Fund accelerated the cash out of 3.36 billion US dollars in the first week of July, and the departure of more than 3.3 billion US dollars of funds did not even cause any waves in the market. The selling orders of the trading studio were quickly digested by the increasingly active demand of the entire market almost immediately.

In the hustle and bustle of the big world, there are always some people who can quietly immerse themselves in their own small world.

Washington DC.

An unmarked Gulfstream V skidded off a private airport in suburban Washington on the last day of June.

The two slender figures with ordinary make-up appearance and even the characteristics of Russian girls got off the plane, and personally moved a whole set of expensive spy equipment in the cabin to the small container trucks that had been prepared in advance by the airport runway. Then quietly drove away.

During the whole process, there was no one in the airport that had been arranged in advance to disturb the work of the two women. Until the truck left the airport, a person in charge of the Firefly Group in Washington, D.C. brought a few assistants to the Gulfstream V passenger plane on the airport runway. It was dragged into the hangar for storage, and an additional two groups of security guards were sent to guard it in turn.

More than an hour later, the truck arrived in the affluent Kalorama neighborhood not far northwest of downtown Washington, and then pulled into a tree-lined residence.

The wealthy district of Kaloma is a gathering area for many wealthy politicians, and the family of Federal Judge Thomas Jackson happens to live nearby.

After careful inspection of the house inside and out, the two women began to arrange various equipment.

In the evening, in the study on the second floor of the residential villa, the eavesdropping device had intercepted and recorded the first call made by Judge Thomas Jackson.

Mobile phone eavesdropping usually has built-in eavesdropping devices, duplicating sim cards, and using walkie-talkie mode at close range.

Of course, in the face of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of eavesdropping equipment, this kind of eavesdropping method is completely out of reach for ordinary people, but in front of the well-funded Firefly Group, there is no obstacle at all.

After Eric was eavesdropped some time ago, he immediately replaced the BlackBerry mobile phone with the cdma network standard that uses two-way encryption and is more difficult to crack to avoid this most difficult to prevent eavesdropping.

However, a poor middle-aged judge obviously did not have such vigilance, but used the most popular and most vulnerable gsm mobile phone to similar eavesdropping.

As a result, the twins have begun to easily record the target’s cell phone communications without even resorting to the more dangerous means of close contact.

For the next three days, the twins quickly and accurately figured out the daily behavior of the Thomas Jackson family.

In the middle of the third night, an ordinary Ford SUV parked in front of an apartment in the Kalorama community. Two nearby street lights ‘just’ broke, and there was no time to repair it. It looked darker before.

The two silent figures skillfully opened the locked door, accurately released the vaporized sedative into the bedrooms of several occupants, and then started their work.

The middle-aged judge’s personal belongings such as watches and mobile phones were unknowingly replaced. Hidden cameras were installed in the living room, study, bedroom, etc., and even the soles of several pairs of leather shoes were also cut open to implant eavesdropping devices.

The two figures in the dark left quietly after the renovation of several cars in the Jackson’s garage.

As a result, in the days that followed, every word, deed, and every move of the Jackson family was clearly recorded by various electronic devices in a room in another residence in Kalorama.

The twins also skillfully switch between several different cars, stalking Thomas Jackson for more than twelve hours a day, quietly listening to a middle-aged judge make a statement in court, cursing a colleague in the bathroom, and at home Perfunctory his wife, flirting with his lover on the phone…

In the chaotic information flow, the twins finally captured the information that Eric wanted on the ninth day of monitoring. The head of a Washington lobbying firm made several tests on Thomas Jackson for two consecutive days. Meeting privately in an underground parking lot, the twins’ cameras in Jackson’s car perfectly captured a sixteen-minute video of the meeting.

Eric, who has been concerned about the whereabouts of the two women, immediately told the twins to stop after watching the video.

All the equipment installed around Thomas Jackson was still methodically taken back one by one, and the twins were only re-boarded on the Gulfstream V after watching several cars used in the past few days being dismantled and destroyed. The whole process seemed to have never happened. Appears in Washington General.

The twins returned to Los Angeles on July 12, another Monday.

Gulfstream V landed at Ventura Airport, and Eric was already standing by the airport runway, watching the twins get off the plane. Don’t do this kind of thing again, the manor hasn’t been cleaned for two weeks, and I found a layer of dust in the kitchen yesterday, which is really uncomfortable.”

Natasha took off Eric’s hug with embarrassment and said softly, “Master, let’s go back and clean up.”

“Let’s rest for a few days,” Eric shook his head: “I just happen to be able to overcome my cleanliness a little bit.”

“Um.”

After Eric finished speaking, he took Natasha’s little hand and said, “Come on, go home with me first.”

Natasha earned Eric’s hand, shook her head and said, “Master, we need to do the things on the plane in person.”

“Can’t it be tomorrow?”

“Mr Cromwell said no.”

“Okay,” Eric said helplessly, “Then I’ll wait for you.”

So it was busy again, and when I returned to the Jiaojiao Manor, it was already evening.

Eating dinner prepared by the twins at night, watching the two girls who didn’t even plan to ask what to do with the video he got, Eric even had a very strange feeling in his heart.

So after a good check that night, I was sure that the girl in my arms was a real person, not a machine.

According to the information in the video, into this most critical week, Eric did not make any further arrangements, and even canceled Yahoo’s second-quarter earnings report that was planned to be released in advance, patiently waiting for things to develop according to the established steps.

UU reading www.sonicmtl.com

Opening on Monday, the Nasdaq index, which closed at 4,911 points last week, continued to rise. For the next five consecutive days, the entire Nasdaq market showed no signs of collapse.

Finally, on July 16, when the week ended, the Nasdaq finally reached a high of 5,056 points, officially breaking the 5,000-point mark.

After the close of the day, according to statistics, the market value of all new technology companies in the Firefly system has also reached an astonishing level.

Among them, Cisco’s market value was finally fixed at 611.5 billion US dollars, successfully surpassing Microsoft and becoming the largest super enterprise by market value in the Nasdaq market and even in the world.

Not far behind, Yahoo’s market value also reached 257.9 billion US dollars.

The market value of Nokia, which is listed in many trading markets such as Europe and North America, has also exceeded 200 billion US dollars, and the comprehensive market value has reached 221.7 billion US dollars.

The most surprising thing is Qualcomm. Qualcomm, which had a market value of only billions of dollars two years ago, has reached the peak of 83.6 billion US dollars at this time, which surprised everyone and had to admire Eric again. Investment vision.

In addition to these, Firefly has invested heavily in technology companies such as Amazon and sprint, and the market value has also reached new highs.

Affected by the sharp rise in the stock price of this series of technology companies, Eric’s personal net worth finally reached an unprecedented $625 billion.

At the same time, Clover Fund successfully completed all liquidation operations before July 16.

The continuous investment of up to 7 billion US dollars for three consecutive years finally brought a huge income of 45.3 billion US dollars to the Clover Fund. After removing all fees and taxes, Firefly Group can still maintain a huge cash reserve of more than 36 billion US dollars.

[End of this Chapter]