Chapter 107 part 2 – Do you want to go to New York?!

Tokita had reported that since we didn’t even buy back when the price fell to $320, it was generally seen as us having fully withdrawn from stocks, at least temporarily.
However, according to Sebastian’s information network, the market viewed us as unpredictable—no one knew when we might come back to buy.

And since Phoenix had been one of the main players in the Dow Index for the past five years, if we reentered the game, it was thought that it might signal the starting gun for the next upward curve.

(I don’t plan on buying stocks for about three years, though.)

Thinking of it as someone else’s concern, I looked down over the trading floor of the stock exchange.
But in the corner of my mind, another thought was swirling.

(If I were to buy in huge quantities, wouldn’t I be able to maintain the market to some extent?) 

Or so I thought.

Even if not to that extent, I couldn’t help but wonder if I could manage a soft landing or at least limit the scale of the decline.
After all, I had an enormous amount of dollars at my disposal. 

A truly enormous sum.

No less than two billion dollars (four billion yen).

Of that, about ten percent had already been sent to Japan after all sorts of maneuvering and careful coordination with the Ministry of Finance, spread out over time, and was being used as operating funds for the Ootori Group and Ootori Holdings.

Furthermore, about one hundred million dollars of profits I had made up until now had already been sent back to Japan separately.
That was the money I had used to rebuild Ootori, secure talent ahead of time, swallow up Suzuki, and otherwise do as I pleased in Japan.

On top of that, several hundred million yen had been raised in Japan using American stocks as collateral, which meant I had already been stirring up the Japanese economy.

Setting that aside, another ten percent or so I had gradually over the course of a year exchanged into gold bullion (pure gold), which at the time hardly anyone was paying attention to.
Half of that was sent to banks in Japan and Switzerland, while the other half was stored in what was considered the safest locations in America. 

This doubled the Swiss account’s bullion holdings to a hundred million dollars, including the original fifty million.

Five hundred million yen worth of bullion was equivalent to half of the gold bullion the Bank of Japan itself possessed at that time.

And I had managed to move fifteen percent of the total, three hundred million dollars, out of America. Conversely, the remaining eighty-five percent was left inside the country.

Of that eighty-five percent, five percent was in pure gold, another five percent was placed in the New York branch of Ootori Holdings, and the remaining seventy-five percent—one and a half billion dollars—was deposited under the name of the Phoenix Fund in major banks all across America. 

In effect, it was a kind of hostage, practically a declaration that I intended to use it.

Unlike in the twenty-first century, I couldn’t simply funnel huge sums into overseas accounts through an array of convenient paper companies.
Besides, if I recklessly sent that much money into Japan, it would wreak havoc on the nation’s monetary system. 

Being on the gold standard was no guarantee of safety.

Japan’s shortage of yen reserves would strangle its trade.
I myself would have no choice but to go into exile abroad.

Even moving fifteen percent in stages—and only twelve and a half percent into Japan—had been extremely difficult.
I owed quite a lot to the government and the navy. 

But in return, I made political donations to the government and politicians, and I sent the navy generous amounts of heavy oil.
And I was truly grateful that someone like Yamamoto Gonbei, who understood such matters, was still alive.

Even so, the reason I was able to move a larger-than-expected fifteen percent was thanks to Japan’s economy being stronger than I had anticipated, with the capacity to absorb it.
The possession of North Sakhalin played a part, but above all, the fact that the Shouwa Financial Crisis had not occurred was decisive.

Turning part of it into pure gold was also significant—because gold was neither dollars nor yen.

By the way, if my memories of my previous life are correct, Japan’s nominal GNP in 1929 was about 16 billion yen, roughly 8 billion dollars.
The total savings deposits were around 8.5 to 9 billion yen. 

The total national assets were about 330 billion yen.

And in this world, Japan’s numbers were 10 to 20 percent larger than that.

Leaving aside the hassle of calculating the total assets in real time, the 2 billion dollars—4 billion yen—that I held amounted to nearly 40 percent of all the money Japanese people had deposited in banks.

It’s hardly a fair comparison, but in twenty-first-century terms, it would be like holding 400 trillion yen in freely usable cash when Japan’s total bank deposits were said to be around 1,000 trillion yen.

In America, I was just another big player.
But in Japan, it was money on an astronomical scale—greater even than the national budget.

And moreover, it was dollars directly tied to gold.

And apart from the initial gold, all of it was bubble money.

“Princess, what are you thinking about?”

When I looked up at the voice, it was Yagami-occhan, my guard who had come all the way out to America with me.
His words carried the air of an adult offering to listen to a child’s worries, but his expression didn’t match that at all. 

And that was just like Yagami-occhan.

“When I look down from here, I feel like I could do anything.”

“As expected of Hime. But don’t let arrogance take hold,” Yagami-occhan warned me.

Wan-san also cautioned me the same way.
I must have been wearing that kind of expression all along. 

At times like this, the opinions of those who stand a little apart, in a neutral position, are precious.

Someone like Shizu, who is in a position closer to me, might sometimes even give me the go-ahead.
But with the two who are responsible for my life, if something is no good, they’ll make sure I pull back.

Thinking that, I took a deep breath.

“Thank you, both of you. I might have gotten a little carried away. Watching the very place where the world is being moved from here, it makes me feel like I’ve become a god. Even though I’m so small.”

“As long as you know your place, you won’t lose your footing,” Yagami-oochan said.

“Sometimes, hesitation itself is necessary. But never trouble yourself alone. We, your retainers, are here with you,” Wan-san added.

“Whatever you lack, we servants will make up for it. Please walk the path you desire, Ojou-sama,” Shizu said.

Not only the two macho men, but even Shizu ended up worrying about me.

At this point, I could only cover it up with a sigh.

“Haa, I really am still a child.”

“Yes, please don’t forget that awareness,” Shizu immediately followed up, apparently thinking the same as the other two—or even more so.

She was right, but all I could do was give a wry smile.
At times like this, the only thing to do is shift the heart’s direction.

“Ahhh, enough already! Staying in this kind of den of demons just drags me down. Let’s go somewhere more open and liberating!”

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Ivy League:

A collective nickname for prestigious universities in the eastern United States.
They have produced countless graduates who lead America’s political, business, academic, and legal worlds.
Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Yale University.

New York Stock Exchange:
For over a century, a place that has been moving the world. Especially around 1929, this tendency was particularly strong.
And from here, hell begins, plunging into WWII.