Terror on Wall Street, a Financial Metafiction Novel Read Free Page B

at risk of failing because of losses on speculative asset-backed derivative contracts.
         The banks had about $1 trillion in deposits and over $50 trillion in derivatives securities.  The total derivatives market itself had been teetering around $800 trillion – over ten times the size of the world’s economy. 
         There was a more stark form of reality taking place in the streets.  None of these interest points or trading failures made any sense to ordinary citizens.  All they knew was that, all of a sudden, their money was gone and, to make matters worse, food and gas was becoming scarce, prices were going up, and they had nothing to pay them with.
         Food riots broke out as major chains like Walmart were besieged by their own customers, who trampled through the doors with the fervor of a thousand Black Fridays.  When their ATM or charge cards were declined, they simply ran out of the store, en masse, with groceries and merchandise.  Since the weekend, most supermarkets in major cities across the country had been picked clean by hoarders and looters, and their supplies had not been restocked, causing them to close.  By Tuesday, Walmart had filed for chapter 11 protection.
         There was a string of suicides at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and the top executives of every major bank, apparently not aware of the captain and ship principle, were packed inside their private jets with their golden parachutes, on their way to Europe or other offshore destinations.
         The warning signs had been there since the crash of 2008, but after the initial shock, nothing had been done to correct the problem.  Banks had been trading over $7 trillion in risky derivatives daily, as well as fixing interest rates and making bets on the rigged games.  There was an ever-growing gap between the elite and all the rest of the people which had continued to develop even after the 2008 crash. 
         The Government had been spitting out statistics: that the economy was in recovery, that unemployment was down, and that the stock market was in the middle of another historic bull run which was actually just another huge bubble. Triggered by the terrorist attacks, that bubble had burst, and financial experts all over the western world were trying to figure out how to put the economy back together again.
         Carlos Rodriguez, a graduate student in economics at the University of Chicago whose father was a well-to-do businessman in Mexico, was preparing for his trip to Washington. There he would be a member of a financial expert team headed by his economics professor Dr. Harry Mason, a Nobel laureate in economics.  As he packed his suitcase, he noticed that the traffic in the city seemed to be louder than usual.  Blaring sirens, the sounds of helicopters circling overhead, and people screaming overpowered the normal ebb and flow din of downtown traffic that he had always been used to.
         When he looked out his window he saw that the streets were jammed with people, as if the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York had been transplanted to Chicago and re-routed down La Salle Street.  There was a large crowd from “Occupy Chicago” outside the Federal Reserve building on 230 S. La Salle, holding signs that they were the “99 percent” and protesting the bank closures, blaming the government for the crash of the economy and demanding access to their cash and government aid. Other crowds were gathered outside the U.S. Bank building on La Salle and the Bank of America branch on Adams, demanding that they open their doors.  The streets were filled with people, choking off traffic all the way to the federal building on Jackson and Dearborn and probably well beyond Carlos’ field of vision.
         Carlos watched in disbelief as SWAT vans and armored personnel carriers pulled up and hordes of police streamed out of them like attacking ants, shooting tear gas into the crowd and pushing at