Washington, D.C., USA.
The date is Tuesday, August 27.
In the private residential quarters of the presidential family in the East Wing of the White House, Bill Clinton, who had quietly started sleeping in separate rooms from Hillary, woke up early today. While having breakfast, he couldn't resist flipping through the latest issue of Forbes magazine, which had been released just yesterday.
It wasn't just the staggering $1.5 trillion personal fortune of the young man at the top of the list that left people speechless; the entire ranking evoked a mix of wonder and unease.
The top ten names on the list were particularly striking:
1. Simon Westeros - $1.5 trillion
2. Bill Gates - $97.1 billion
3. Claire Gain - $29.5 billion
4. Neal Brantley - $29.5 billion
5. Paul Allen - $18.6 billion
6. Tim Berners-Lee - $17.8 billion
7. Jeff Bezos - $17.8 billion
8. Carol Bartz - $17.8 billion
9. Larry Ellison - $15.5 billion
10. Warren Buffett - $13.9 billion
Among the top ten richest Americans, the first place seemed almost like an anomaly, but even the others all had personal fortunes in the tens of billions.
And this wasn't the most critical point.
What stood out the most was that nine out of these ten super-wealthy individuals, with the exception of Warren Buffett, had accumulated most of their wealth through the rapidly growing technology sector. This trend was even more pronounced across the full list of 400 names, giving the impression that a new era had surged forward almost overnight.
By 7:30 a.m., after breakfast, Attorney General Janet Reno arrived at the White House for a final discussion with the president regarding a press conference scheduled for 9 a.m.
With the release of the Forbes rankings and the media frenzy it sparked, the White House saw the perfect moment to launch a carefully prepared initiative.
Coincidentally, yesterday, August 26, the Democratic National Convention had officially begun in Atlanta, Georgia, leveraging the residual momentum from the recently concluded Olympic Games. As the incumbent president, Clinton didn't need to attend the entire four-day event but was scheduled to deliver a speech and formally accept the party's nomination on August 29.
Immediately following this was the Republican National Convention, set to run from August 30 to September 3.
These eight days marked the final stretch of the primary phase of the presidential election. After the Republican nomination was announced on September 3, the full-on race for the presidency would officially begin.
Though much of the outcome during this period was already settled with little room for surprises, the competition never ceased.
Determined to avoid a passive position, the Clinton administration had decided to preemptively challenge the Westeros System. After weeks of preparation, and riding the wave of the Forbes 400 richest Americans list, today presented the ideal opportunity to make a bold move and ensure the best possible media impact, leaving little room for Republican criticism.
After a half-hour discussion, Janet Reno departed in haste.
At 9 a.m., the U.S. Department of Justice, led by Janet Reno, held a press conference to announce a new investigation into Egret Corporation. The investigation cited Egret's failure to comply with a 1994 agreement with the Justice Department, focusing on allegations of monopolistic practices.
The investigation targeted Egret's software and internet divisions for abusing market dominance to force users into its proprietary internet software and cloud computing services, engaging in unfair competition through its monopoly on the IE browser, and using its market position to suppress competitors.
Despite the three-hour time difference between the East and West Coasts, Egret Corporation's East Coast division quickly responded. They expressed regret over the Justice Department's investigation and reiterated that Egret strictly adheres to market rules, outright denying all allegations made at the press conference. Egret's official website also published a detailed rebuttal.
From the moment Verizon Communications went public to the Justice Department's launch of the investigation, only ten days had passed. This brief period was sufficient for those in the know to discern the White House's intentions. While the announcement might have surprised ordinary citizens, the developments were far from a secret in Washington, Wall Street, or Silicon Valley.
The public's primary concern was the potential impact of the investigation on the NASDAQ stock market, a concern shared by the White House.
As the orchestrator of the move, Clinton was acutely aware that triggering a tech stock crash by piercing the bubble could spell disaster for his re-election campaign, even jeopardizing his current lead in the polls.
Fortunately, preemptive risk assessments suggested that merely initiating an investigation without taking substantive action would have minimal effects on the NASDAQ. Announcing the investigation the day after Forbes published its new rankings was also intended to mitigate potential fallout, as the rankings were expected to have a positive impact on the tech market. Indeed, the NASDAQ had risen by 2.9% following the rankings' release, which could offset the negative consequences of the investigation.
The press conference lasted 20 minutes, and at 9:30 a.m., the stock market opened.
The NASDAQ immediately took a nosedive.
Within five minutes, the index fell from 5,263 points to 5,134, a 1.9% drop.
With the NASDAQ's total market value at $6 trillion, this seemingly minor 1.9% dip wiped out over $100 billion in stock value in mere minutes.
Egret Corporation, the primary target, suffered slightly more, with its stock price dropping 2.6% within the same five minutes. Although this translated to nearly $10 billion in vanished market value, the damage remained within manageable limits.
Under intense scrutiny, the NASDAQ began to rebound after its initial dip, as did Egret's stock price. There was no sign of the anticipated mass selloff. Half an hour after the market opened, the NASDAQ climbed back above 5,200 points, and Egret's stock loss narrowed to under 2%. The sense of relief was palpable.
The Republicans swiftly retaliated.
Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, who had recently launched his personal website, used the platform to publish a blog post at 10 a.m. Criticizing Clinton's investigation into Egret as a mere political stunt, Dole accused the president of trying to cover up years of policy failures in the tech sector.
Dole promised that if elected, he would take real action to ensure the tech industry's wealth was shared more equitably and prevent the benefits of the information age from being concentrated among a select few.
Dole's deliberate choice to use IBM's platform for his website, rather than a Westeros-associated service like Facebook, underscored his intent to distance himself from Simon Westeros' empire.
His remarks resonated with public frustration, particularly in light of the massive wealth disparities highlighted by the Forbes list.
While Dole's comments stirred populist sentiments, insiders noted that he avoided directly naming Simon Westeros. His promises to ensure broader wealth distribution in the tech industry amounted to little more than political posturing.
This episode underscored a key political reality: the White House, led by the president, wielded decisive power to act unilaterally. In contrast, Congress, though controlled by the Republicans since the 1994 midterms, struggled with bureaucratic inertia and lacked the agility to counter the president's moves in a matter of days.
As a result, the Clinton administration's preemptive strike stood unopposed, achieving its intended effect of directing public and media attention toward the staggering wealth amassed by the Westeros System.
Among the 400 individuals on the Forbes list, 53 were directly associated with the Westeros System, up from 37 the previous year. This concentration of wealth at the pinnacle of American society only fueled calls for policies like wealth taxes to address inequality.
Despite these demands, the Westeros System's influence, bolstered by its growing dominance across various sectors, ensured that such proposals gained little traction. Instead, the narrative shifted toward downplaying the perceived wealth of tech moguls, framing it as inflated by stock market bubbles, and promoting the idea that the internet offered equal opportunities for all.
The reverberations of the Forbes rankings were not limited to the United States. Across the globe, including in China, the list, or more specifically, certain individuals on it, caught the attention of the political elite.
One such individual was ranked 387th, with a personal fortune of $500 million.
Her name? Su Lin.
To many, this revelation was startling. Su Lin, a Chinese immigrant who had only been in the U.S. for two years, had amassed a fortune equivalent to 4.3 billion yuan, surpassing the combined wealth of the 17 individuals featured on Forbes' inaugural list of mainland Chinese billionaires just a year earlier.
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