Chapter 189

The reign of the Rothchild family was over. Their end was not as disastrous as the Goldstein family, but their past glory would never return as they had given up their stake in the U.S. Central Bank, also known as the Federal Reserve. The emergency meeting in the Rothschild family’s mansion ended in despair.

Zing-

Isaac Rothschild’s electric wheelchair crossed the hallway while its motor whirred. Then, he suddenly took his hands off the control lever when he was in front of the portraits of the former heads, and he sat there for hours. After a while, Dresner walked over from the end of the hall.

“I knew you would be here.”

“Ah, I forgot to tell you. I appreciate your work on my behalf.”

Dresner couldn’t win the throne in the end, but he wasn’t complaining as the loss he felt while living in the center of the family’s collapse was catastrophic.

“You must feel a lot of remorse, but…”

“I know. It was an inevitable decision to survive. My heart is breaking not just because we had lost stake in the Federal Reserve,” Isaac interrupted.

He abruptly ended there as there was no point in elaborating further. Saying there was no hope of getting the stakes back out loud would hurt them even more.

“You should cheer up now. You have to rebuild things that you have destroyed. You have done terrible things to our family and all our blood relatives.”

“That’s why I said I will hand this position over to your brother if you don’t want it.”

Dresner pulled something out of his jacket, and it was a crumpled invitation letter.

“That’s Na Seon-Hu’s invitation letter. Did you keep it?” Isaac asked in astonishment.

“I waited for the members to leave, picked it up, and ironed it to straighten it… All of this was up to me. It’s your turn now.”

Dresner placed the letter on Isaac’s lap. It was a vicious invitation that sent his family back to where they were a hundred years ago. Isaac frowned as he looked at it. It was only a piece of paper, but it pressed down on his knee with the weight of a heavy rock.

Dresner continued, “Na Seon-Hu has completed his empire. Even if you don"t want to admit it, it’s true that our family already belongs to it. That is what you have done.”

Isaac had felt Dresner’s intentions in having this conversation from the very beginning.

“You… want me to be a clown.”

Like the clown who didn’t mind wearing funny makeup to please the emperor and his blood relatives.

“My parents and I can’t do that because that’s the responsibility of the head.”

Neither Isaac nor Dresner had a reproachful tone while they talked. Although they didn’t sigh, every single word they spoke contained deep frustration.

“Our generation won’t have a chance. If the next one can’t, then maybe the generation after that might have an opportunity to retrieve our past glory.”

If the Rothschild family had been the world before, then it was the Korean Na’s world from now on. However, a new guy might appear and break Na Seon-Hu’s order the same way he had handled the Rothschilds. For that slight chance, Isaac had no choice but to pick up the invitation letter.

It was then that the sound of someone rus.h.i.+ng furiously echoed through the hallway. The man sprinted down the hall before handing the doc.u.ment to Dresner, not Isaac. Although Isaac was still the head, he had lost both respect and dignity. Isaac carefully studied Dresner’s reaction with a brooding face.

Another problem must have occurred again since Dresner’s expression became overcast as he read the doc.u.ment. The other man had regained his composure lately as if he had overcome every hards.h.i.+p in his life. However, his face and ears became flushed after reading it. The file in his hand was shaking too. Isaac was scared to ask what had happened.

“Jonathan… has invested two hundred billion dollars in creating a fund. He is asking for voluntary partic.i.p.ation from governments and businesses around the world.”

Na Seon-Hu was feisty as he had the authority to reorganize the order. Jonathan said ‘voluntary partic.i.p.ation,’ but it was compulsory. Na Seon-Hu was doing the same thing that the Bilderberg Club’s American members had done by creating the IMF.

“The family should pay for…”

Isaac couldn’t finish his sentence.

“Euk!”

Dresner suddenly pressed down both of his hands on Isaac’s knees with all of his weight, then he glared at Isaac as if he wanted to kill him right away. “Look what you have done to our family.”

Dresner then shoved the file into Isaac’s face.

「The Launch of the International Fund for Nature

Sender: Jonathan Investment and Finance Group

Content: The fund is designed to support the development of the natural environment and technology in developing countries….」

As Isaac checked the full text, his face became red. He turned his head away before finis.h.i.+ng the whole doc.u.ment. His physician had warned him that if his blood pressure exploded again, his life would be at risk.

Dresner snarled, “Look at it!”

Isaac replied weakly, “Dresner… Stop.”

The other man huffed. “I… I will put up with it this time, so I want you to tolerate this.”

“Do you still want me to be a clown when they act like this?” Isaac asked.

Dresner looked at Isaac fiercely and yelled at him, “Then, are you going to fight back? Clown? At least, a clown is still human. You will have to be Na Seon-Hu’s pet dog. If he tells you to bark and eat, do as you are told. You should save our family even if you have to become his dog!”

“O...okay… For… for our future generations…”

“Yes! For our future generations. d.a.m.n it! We should at least try to f.u.c.king survive for now!”

***

Jonathan put down his phone and became absentminded for a few minutes. Then, he called Kim Cheong-Soo downstairs.

The plans they had prepared in antic.i.p.ation of Rothschild’s backlash had been canceled.

“Are these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds cowards? Or are they just bold?” he muttered to himself.

There was nothing to be worried about, but it would have been quite c.u.mbersome if the Rothschilds had succeeded in rallying the world’s prestigious families and banks. However, Seon-Hu was right again this time. They had been struck dumb with terror.

“A mouse bites when it is in a corner? That’s ridiculous. It becomes frozen in fear, and the predator gulps it down. Now is the perfect time. When they are stuck in a subprime crisis, let’s swallow them all at once.”

Yes, but…

Jonathan was surprised by the Rothschild’s determination to relinquish their power to handle dollars by handing over their shares in the Federal Reserve and fully cooperating with the International Fund for Nature that Seon-Hu had launched. In other words, it meant they would give up the tower they had built for decades with the other prestigious families of the world. The ‘tower’ was basically the Environmental Protection Fund.

Na Seon-Hu’s fund was created to target the Environmental Protection Fund. The new fund was named after that, and the external purpose of the establishment was derived from it. Officially, it had been formed to protect the environment of developing countries, but in fact, it had originated to extort land from people in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

The Environmental Protection Fund had lent pennies to developing countries. By doing that, over thirty percent of the world’s land had been secured as collateral. These lands had been frequently handed to the fund over as developing countries couldn’t pay back their debt. The representative case in this was the Amazon.

The financial conglomerates who had previously controlled the world’s order did everything they could to satisfy their own greed. Gangs in the back alleys pointed their guns to purloin goods, but the conglomerates were different. They were talented at masking their greed with the veil of good intentions by using a plausible justification, a complicatedly intertwined system, and money. Seon-Hu had no plan to leave the Environmental Protection Fund alone. He had purposely launched the same fund to combine them.

Now that the Rothschilds have lowered their heads, it’s the Treasury’s turn.

If they both lowered their heads, the shareholders below them wouldn’t fight back.

The U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, who Jonathan had been waiting for, came.

“You must be really busy,” Jonathan said.

The Secretary looked a decade older than the last time Jonathan saw him at the Bilderberg Club. His dark circles had extended his cheeks, and his eyes were bloodshot. Because of his haggard appearance, his strong tone sounded weak.

“I came to inform you of our administration’s decision. The president is seriously concerned about the Jonathan Investment and Finance Group’s dominance.”

Jonathan interrupted the man before he could say more, “You’re starting off the conversation on a bad note, but it’s okay. I’ve heard that so many times before, so you can say whatever is on your mind.”

The secretary had a sour look on his face. “Jonathan… Although the subprime burst in the Rothschild family, the problem was created by your group. If you continue ignoring our administration’s request and throwing out new controls like this…”

“Are you serious that my group created the subprime matter? Dang. Even if you grab any freshman in economics off the street, they wouldn’t claim that. How have you been sleeping lately?”

Jonathan tapped the desk lightly with the tip of his pen while laughing.

Tap, tap.

“Let’s not cloud the issue and talk about it in circles. I’m not that free either,” Jonathan added.

“As you know, there is a fund that has the same purpose as the one you established. Is it necessary to have two things that are exactly the same?” the Secretary asked.

Jonathan smiled. “That’s it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Keeping two of them is unnecessary. Let’s eliminate the Environmental Protection Fund and start everything over with the International Fund for Nature. We ask for your cooperation.”

“The president is…”

“Ah, our president has no tact at all. If he continues to be slow like this, he won’t be re-elected next time. I don’t want to put you in trouble. Let me talk to him directly.”

Jonathan reached out his hand to the Secretary, and the other man stiffened, but ended up taking out his phone. He dialed a number multiple times in an attempt to connect with the U.S. president, but the line stayed busy.

“The president must be calling the figures who helped him get elected,” Jonathan remarked.

He meant the financial conglomerates on Wall Street. The Secretary phoned the hotline instead, and finally, the connected call was in Jonathan’s hand.

Jonathan handed the phone back to the Secretary of the Treasury. The other man took his own phone outside Jonathan’s office and spent some time there making phone calls. When he came back, the stress on his face had gotten worse.

“Our administration has also decided to partic.i.p.ate in the launch of the new fund and to help clean up the Environmental Protection Fund.”

Then, Jonathan stopped the man, who was about to leave. The Secretary of the Treasury picked up the doc.u.ments that Jonathan had given him, and it contained the profile of one of the board members of the Jonathan Group.

“Give it to the president.”

“What is this?” The Secretary of the Treasury wasn’t asking this question because he didn’t know who the person was.

Jonathan casually replied, “I recommend him as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.”

Another name for the Federal Reserve’’ chairman was ‘World Economic President’ because the position determined not only the U.S. benchmark interest rate, but also the number of dollars in circulation. That was what the public knew.

The Secretary clenched his teeth as the government wouldn’t be able to deny this. In fact, the Korean named Na Seon-Hu who was behind the Jonathan Group was now taking control of the global economy in his hands. He was the real president of the world economy.

Ah!

For a second, an eerie thought pa.s.sed through the Secretary of the Treasury’s mind.

What if he is at the stage of confidently intervening in the Federal Reserve?

“Jonathan… Umm… By any chance… mm… The stake in the Federal Reserve…”

Jonathan didn’t hide anything as the man would soon hear about it, so he answered calmly, “Oh, the dollars? How much do you want?”