Strengthening business in Africa, putting aside all other details, the most fundamental core is resources.

Simon happened to discuss this issue with Janet during the day.

In this world, many countries seem to be very wealthy and many people live well, but in fact, all this is just a manifestation.

Resources are never enough.

No matter how much layout the Westeros family has made in various aspects such as intelligence or military, the fundamental reason for supporting all this is money, and what money represents is actually resources.

Simon is very clear about the direction of the US economy in the next twenty years, the real industry will continue to become hollowed out, and the tertiary industry led by finance will become stronger and stronger. However, all this seems to be prosperous, but in fact, it is constantly abandoning the foundation on which a country relies on for survival.

Food, clothing, housing and transportation are the most basic needs of human society.

If a country put aside these most basic people's livelihood industries and continues to increase its investment in various castle-style tertiary industries, then once there is a drastic change, the result will be disastrous.

Just like the United States, it seems that an agricultural power will never have the most basic food crisis. However, as a reference in the past, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the entire national production system collapsed. As a granary in Eastern Europe, Ukraine's annual grain output plummeted from more than 50 million tons before the disintegration to 11 million tons in 1991, a plunge of 80%, so that Ukraine had to ask the international community for help to avoid famine.

The former Soviet Union did not make big strides in industrial upgrading, and until its disintegration, it still maintained a very large proportion of industrial and agricultural share. However, even such an economy, when a sudden change occurs, the food production system will collapse, so how can the United States be exception?

The problem is easy to understand.

For the United States, when the industrial structure continues to upgrade, industries such as fertilizers and agricultural machinery, which are important auxiliary to agriculture, are abandoned due to strong pollution and low profits, and are migrating outward significantly. As a result, once it falls into a serious crisis, it will be difficult for the United States to provide sufficient means of production in the short term to ensure the sustained agricultural production.

The result can be imagined.

This is not an unreasonable worry or an exaggeration.

Because it has happened.

The Great Depression in the United States in the 1930s was a rapidly rising superindustrial power. When the economy experienced a serious crisis, industrial and agricultural production almost collapsed. Due to food shortages, a large-scale famine was caused. In just four years between 1929 and 1933, more than 7 million people died abnormally.

The changes in the US economic structure cannot be stopped, and Simon does not intend to stop it.

In fact, globally, because of the profit-seeking nature of capital, in many countries, when the government regulatory system is weak or ineffective, this trend cannot be stopped.

What Simon wants to do is rely on the shell of the United States, use the huge wealth he owns, and constantly seize more resources around the world. At the same time, based on these land, forests, water sources, minerals and other resources, build a global physical industrial chain that is absolutely controlled by the Westeros system.

The core of this industrial chain is ‘food, clothing, housing and transportation’.

The same is true. In this world, when modern civilization can no longer easily kill a person like the era of royal power, then, if you want to seek this, the so-called power, the simplest expression is to master a person's job.

I can make you have nothing to do with food and clothing in one sentence, so if you don’t want to starve to death, you must listen to me. This is power.

By analogy, if you master everyone's job, it is equivalent to controlling the world.

This is exactly Simon's pursuit.

Therefore, if Simon can build a physical industrial chain that is related to the entire world's "food, clothing, housing and transportation", then he will almost have the ability to control the entire world.

Of course, this is a civilized world, and everyone is civilized, so reality will not be so simple and crude. However, if you open the surface of that civilization, many things will not change since time immemorial.

In short, for the Westeros system, compared with the industrial upgrading pursued by countries around the world, what Simon needs to do next is to artificially continuously ‘industrial downgrade’ the Westeros system.

In the current Westeros system, the two companies with the highest market value, whether Daenerys or Igrit, are obviously part of the tertiary industry. The disadvantage of the related fields is that for ordinary people, if they don’t watch movies or cannot surf the Internet, they will still live well enough.

That is to say, Daenerys and Egret are not absolutely necessary for this world.

The specific approach Simon wants to implement is to continuously reduce holdings of non-essential industries and continue to increase investment in necessary industries in the future.

It is very unwise to do this from the perspective of business interests alone.

Traditional necessary industries often mean fierce competition and meager profits. On the contrary, the tertiary industry often represents low investment and high returns. This is also the fundamental reason why many countries continue to pursue industrial upgrading in the economic development process. In order to pursue high returns, the authorities will take the initiative to promote such industrial upgrading.

However, for Simon, he no longer needs to make too much profit too quickly, because with the current scale of Westeros system, even if the growth rate is slow, the annual increase will still be very large.

The entire Westeros system and economic scale are already equivalent to a group of countries in the world, and Simon is also continuing to promote the Westeros system to be operated as a country. In this case, the foundation of this "country" must be stable, not the Internet, and film, television and entertainment, which are non-essential industries that can live well without people in the world.

Having said that, Simon has only one general direction for the Westeros system's "industrial downgrade" strategy and does not have a very specific implementation plan.

You can only take one step at a time.

Because there are no specific examples to refer to, Simon can only cross the river by feeling the stones. Of course, this kind of crossing the river by feeling the stones will be carried out by countless top elite teams in the entire Westeros system, and it will definitely not be scrambling to rush around indiscriminately.

Moreover, Simon also has his own advantage, which is his super fault tolerance rate.

Even if the plan fails, Simon's personal wealth has shrunk to one-tenth of now, and he is still the richest person in the world. What's more, the chance of this happening is extremely low, just like the subprime mortgage crisis created by Wall Street that was eventually borne by the US government and the entire United States. In the current Westeros system, as long as Simon wants, it can also pass on the losses to the United States, or the whole world.

...

After the housewarming party on November 21, everything continues.

Even though the aerial apron on Westeros Building has begun to be opened, the news in the media about the Westeros family quietly moving into Westeros Building is still almost gone.

However, many things have begun to change.

On November 23, on Monday of Thanksgiving, Simon discussed some ideas that arose on the weekend with James Rebeld and other core leaders of the Westeros system, and began to formulate some targeted detailed implementation plans.

The most important point is to speed up the reduction of holdings in stocks of some core companies such as Daenerys and Egret.

Just like the classmate of Damen back then, he cashed out the stocks that seemed to be huge in his hands, and then converted them into scattered investments that were easier to cash in. The difference is that the scale of related stocks held by Simon is too large. In addition, Simon is not short of money, and what he lacks is still suitable investment opportunities.

After discussion, everyone has formulated a replacement plan.

Use the stocks of core companies in Westeros system mastered by Simon to replace the stocks of various other excellent companies around the world, as long as the person who is interested is willing to exchange them. The biggest advantage of doing this is to eliminate the steps of cashing out first and then buying. The two seemingly simple steps often mean market turmoil, especially the stocks of core companies in Simon's hands. Every time they reduce their holdings, it will have a suppressive effect on the rise in stock prices.

Simon occasionally uses share reduction to suppress the stock price’s rapid rise, but on the other hand, it is impossible to directly collapse the stock price because of too much share reduction.

Another very important thing is that when stock replacement is properly operated, there is almost no need to pay taxes.

Simon is a person who values ​​efficiency very much. He finalized the plan and released the news on the same day. Then, even if there were not many people who could directly contact Simon, the private phone number was still exploded.

There is no way, anyone with a discerning eye can see that after the Southeast Asian financial crisis last year, the US dollar returned, and the US stock market began to recover quickly in less than a year after experiencing a brief downturn after the Nasdaq collapse in March 1997. Especially technology stocks, with the rapid development of companies such as Igrit, Tinkobaier, American Online, and Verizon, stock prices have also begun to rise rapidly again.

In this case, it is very convertible to exchange for stocks that are growing slowly or even lacking growth potential in exchange for stocks that are growing rapidly in the Westeros system.

As for the bubble?

Of course everyone knows that there is a bubble in Nasdaq, but this is how human nature is. Many people always think that they can avoid the bubble and stand in advance.

Then, after being confirmed by the senior management of Westeros system, the media began to follow up, and even Washington paid attention. The President personally had a call with Simon to confirm that someone did not want to smash the market. This time he felt relieved. Even if Clinton had all the most important election levels in the past eight years after the Central District election, there was no possibility of a next term. But in the end, he still hoped that the new technology market would start and end well during his term.

Therefore, in the following few days, even though the specific replacement plan was not very clear and needed to be explored in actual operations, Westeros quickly received a stock exchange transaction application with a total value of more than US$30 billion.

November 26th, Thanksgiving.

Simon and his family continued to spend time in New York, and Nancy also came from Europe, and the whole family was lively.

After Thanksgiving, December is about to enter.

In the past week, in addition to the sensational Westeros system stock exchange plan, it is a bit smaller, and Igrett, on this Monday, a role-playing online game from South Korea, "Wind Kingdom". The name is actually the same as in China, and it is actually the logo of the second part because it is not necessary.

Relying on Igret's user platform that is much larger than Daenerys and powerful promotions in the early stages of operation, in just three days before Thanksgiving on Thursday, the number of activated users of "Wind Kingdom" in North America quickly exceeded 2.7 million.

The amazing results made the game industry once again exclaim the arrival of the online game era.

Just like Japan's stand-alone and Korean networks, the development of the technology tree of the game industry does not absolutely point in one direction. With a series of online games constantly testing the waters, Simon has to doubt whether the stand-alone game industry will be severely squeezed due to his own strategy.

However, Simon has no intention of changing the development plan for his own gaming console.

As I said, the current Westeros system has a high enough fault tolerance rate. If the facts prove that the direction is wrong in the future, then reduce the investment. After all, from the beginning, Simon did not bet on one direction, or even put more energy into the other direction.

...

After Thanksgiving, the second box office week of the Thanksgiving period ended.

The addition of a number of new films in the past two weeks has easily exceeded US$200 million this week.

There is not much suspense. As a super heavy sequel, "Mummy 2" easily topped the weekly box office championship in the first week, and the film earned 71.34 million US dollars in seven days in the first week. Obviously, the gap with the more than $90 million US dollars in last week of "The Great Collision of Heaven and Earth" last week was obvious. However, as it still goes, "The Great Collision of Heaven and Earth" is just an exception. "Mummy 2" can have a box office of more than 70 million in the first week, which means that there is a great hope of 200 million to reach the local area, which is already very successful.

The second place was unexpected and expected. "The Great Collision of Heaven and Earth" had a box office of US$51.29 million in the next week, and a cumulative box office of US$144.56 million in the two weeks.

Unexpectedly, it was because the new film "American Police Officer" that was also highly watched by Bai Ge Wu, who was not even able to win the runner-up.

As expected, it was "American Police Officer". As a traditional action thriller similar to the theme of "The Desperate" backdrop, even if the reputation is not bad, Bai Gewu performed normally. But the problem is that against the background of visual spectacle blockbusters such as "Mummy 2" and "The Great Collision of Heaven and Earth", the audience is obviously more willing to enter the theater to watch a CG feast.

The trend cannot be reversed.

In any case, Paramount spent a huge investment of $100 million and spared no effort in publicity and distribution. "American Police Officer" finally occupied the third place, earning $39.17 million in seven days in the first week.

It is not considered a box office defeat, but it has absolutely nothing to do with success.
Chapter completed!