Bombs in the Sky fell endlessly to the ground, harvesting human souls layer by layer like the Reaper's scythe! In another place called Financial Street, people stared feverishly at the bulletin boards, clutching their stocks and shouting at the top of their lungs!
For every Peng Joe soldier who died, one of the Federation's stocks would rise by one cent!
Someone once described the relationship between the war that was unfolding and the Federation's finances this way. What he said might not have been entirely right, but it might not have been wrong either. He had merely exposed, in the most naked way possible, the reason the Federation's financial sector had continued rising after emerging from its slump! We were making money from other people's lives and souls!
The banknotes people counted were stained with blood! It was vivid and cruel, but it was also pleasing!
Ever since Storm Operation began, stocks had kept rising. It was as if people had returned in an instant to that long-missed era more than a decade ago!
People converted everything they could pawn into cash, then poured it into the Stock Market, watching it double again and again!
But this time, the Federation's sustained financial growth was different from what had happened ten years ago! Ten years ago, the Federation's finances had enjoyed unprecedented prosperity, but that prosperity had been false! With no real economy to support it, the withdrawal of international hot money had exposed the empty nature of the Federation's economy and financial system. The arrival of the Great Depression had dealt the Federation's people a heavy blow, jolting them awake from their beautiful dream! But this time, things were different.
That was because this growth was built on the foundation of the Federation's national credit and rising national strength! As