424: Chapter 424 No Way Out

Washington, the underground Situation Room of the White House.

2:17 AM local time.

When President Jack was called out of bed, he had only thrown a bathrobe over his pajamas, and his hair was as messy as a bird's nest.

When he walked into the Situation Room, a dozen people were already seated inside.

The Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the CIA Director, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, plus two Advanced economic advisors.

A pile of printed papers and empty coffee cups that had already been drained were spread across the table.

The large screen was playing a recorded playback of the Great Xia State Advisory Council press conference, with the image frozen on the LED screen behind Director Li Wenbo—the words "Settlement in daxia currency only" occupied half the wall.

On the smaller screen next to it was a real-time exchange rate chart.

The curve of the daxia currency against the eagle dollar looked like a rubber band shot from a slingshot, flying straight up from the bottom, and it still hadn't stopped.

Jack stood at the doorway and watched that curve for three seconds, then walked to his seat and sat down.

"Who will speak first."

The Secretary of the Treasury spoke up. He was forty-eight years old, a Harvard Ph.D. in economics, and had worked at Goldman Sachs for twelve years.

When President Jack chose him, he had said, "I need someone who understands Wall Street."

Now, this person who understood Wall Street looked ashen, and the dark circles under his eyes were heavier than Jack's.

"Mr. President, over the past four hours, the global foreign exchange market has experienced the most violent single-day fluctuation since the 2008 financial crisis.

The exchange rate of the daxia currency against the eagle dollar has rebounded by more than 180 percent from its lowest point after the sanctions, and it is currently stabilizing at around three to one.

Our short positions—"

He paused, as if weighing his words.

"Wall Street's short positions on the daxia currency have a total exposure of approximately 240 billion eagle dollars.

Based on the current exchange rate, the floating losses on these positions have already exceeded 80 billion eagle dollars.

If it continues to rise tomorrow, at least one of either Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley will face a liquidity crisis."

Jack tapped his fingers on the table.

"Tell me how to stop capital from flowing into the daxia currency."

Morris shook his head.

"It can't be stopped."

"What do you mean it can't be stopped?"

"Mr. President, there is only one reason for the capital flow into the daxia currency—the rejuvenation pill.

Cancer patients all over the world, their families, their insurance companies, and their governments all need the daxia currency to purchase this medicine.

This is not speculation; this is rigid demand.

You cannot issue a ban on rigid demand."

He flipped through the document in front of him.

"We have made a rough calculation.

There are 19 million new cancer patients globally each year; assuming 0.5 percent of them have the willingness and ability to purchase, that is 95,000 people.

One hundred million daxia currency per person—the annual funding requirement is 9.5 trillion daxia currency, which is approximately 3 trillion eagle dollars."

He looked up at Jack.

"An annual foreign exchange demand of 3 trillion eagle dollars.

And this is just for cancer.

If it is confirmed that the rejuvenation pill is also effective for other diseases—heart disease, Alzheimer's, ALS—this number will multiply several times over."

Jack did not speak.

The Secretary of State took over.

"Can we solve this at the source? For example, by sanctioning the rejuvenation pill itself—banning any eagle citizen from purchasing it?"

Morris looked at him.

"Mr. Secretary of State, are you going to tell an eagle citizen with stage four lung cancer that they are not allowed to go to Great Xia to buy medicine?

Are you going to tell the mother of a brain tumor patient that her child must wait to die because the government won't allow her to use the daxia currency?"

The Secretary of State did not respond.

"The day after such a ban is issued," Morris continued, "the entrance to the White House will be packed with protesters.

And these won't be ordinary protesters—they will be cancer patients and their families.

How do you plan to handle that? Use tear gas?"

The conference room was silent for a few seconds.

CIA Director Smith cleared his throat.

"What about military pressure?"

The Secretary of Defense looked at him with an expression like he was looking at someone who had said something stupid.

"Pressure with what? Aircraft carriers? We just withdrew twenty-eight aircraft carriers from the Western Pacific.

The Xuan Niao flew over our capital and stayed for over four hours, and we didn't even see its shadow on the radar."

He leaned back in his chair.

"And what is the purpose of the pressure? To force them to stop selling the rejuvenation pill?

Do you think Great Xia will stop selling a medicine that can cure cancer just because we sent a few warships over?

How will the rest of the world view us—that we are preventing humanity from obtaining life-saving medicine just to maintain the hegemony of the eagle dollar?"

The CIA Director shut his mouth.

The senior economic advisor sitting in the corner—a white-haired old man in his sixties named Henry Singer II, who had worked at the Treasury for thirty years and had experienced the 2008 financial crisis, the Eurozone debt crisis, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic—had not spoken since he entered.

Now, he spoke.

"We thought cutting off SWIFT would be a fatal blow."

His voice was not loud, but the soundproofing of the Situation Room made every word clear.

"We didn't expect them to just flip the table.

What is the core logic of the financial system we spent a hundred years building? It is to make the world unable to function without the eagle dollar.

But now something has appeared that makes the world unable to function without the daxia currency.

And this dependency is deeper than the dependency on the eagle dollar—because the eagle dollar buys goods, but the daxia currency buys lives."

He took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with the corner of his clothing.

"This is not a financial war; this is a dimensional strike."

No one in the conference room spoke.

Jack sat at the head of the table, his hands crossed over his chest, staring for a long time at the exchange rate curve that was still climbing on the large screen.

Then he said one sentence.

"Make Great Xia hand over the formula for this rejuvenation pill."

Everyone looked at him at the same time.

No one immediately responded.

After about five seconds of silence, Morris spoke first, his tone more cautious than before.

"Mr. President, do you mean to let Great Xia transfer the technology for the rejuvenation pill through negotiations?"

"Not negotiations," Jack said. "It's an exchange.

We can open up chip exports. All chips, including the most Advanced ones.

Seven nanometer, five nanometer, three nanometer, all opened up.

EUV lithography machines can also be discussed. In exchange, they give us the formula for the rejuvenation pill, or at least authorize us to produce it domestically."

He said this with a very serious tone, as if he felt he had proposed a good plan.

Henry Singer II put his glasses back on and watched Jack's expression for about three seconds.

Morris lowered his head, staring at the documents on the table, not looking up.

The Secretary of State's mouth twitched, but he quickly tightened it back.

The Secretary of Defense turned his head to look out the window, as if he had suddenly become interested in the lights in the hallway.

CIA Director Smith's reaction was the most direct—he picked up the coffee cup in front of him and took a sip, probably to hide his expression.

No one spoke.

But in everyone's eyes was written the same meaning.

Chips for rejuvenation pills?

One is an industrial product, with production capacity distributed globally; Samsung can make it, TSMC can make it, and in a few years, Great Xia will be able to make it themselves.

The other is a drug that can cure cancer, which currently only Great Xia can produce.

Everyone present knew how many orders of magnitude the value of these two things differed.

Henry Singer put down his coffee cup and cleared his throat gently.

"Mr. President, suppose I am a decision-maker in Great Xia. You take chips to exchange for my rejuvenation pill formula—why would I agree?"

Jack frowned.

"Because they need chips. Their semiconductor industry—"

"Their semiconductor industry is indeed lagging, but chips cannot cure cancer," Henry interrupted him. "And the rejuvenation pill can.

One rejuvenation pill sells for 100 million daxia currency; 100,000 pills would be 10 trillion.

With this money, they could build ten chip factories and spend five years catching up to our technological level.

But we couldn't produce a rejuvenation pill even if we spent fifty years."

He paused.

"This is not an equal exchange. This is trading scrap metal for gold."

Jack's mouth opened, then closed again.

The conference room fell into silence again.

On the large screen, the exchange rate curve for the daxia currency jumped up another notch.

Morris stared at that curve and suddenly thought of something.

"Mr. President, there is one more problem we may need to face immediately."

"What?"

"Our own cancer patients at home," Morris said. "There are about two million new cancer diagnoses in the eagle nation every year.

These people now know of the existence of the rejuvenation pill. What will they do?"

Jack did not answer.

"They will find a way to get the daxia currency," Morris answered his own question. "And currently, there are no official foreign exchange channels between us and Great Xia—because we cut them off ourselves.

In other words, our own citizens, because of our own sanction policies, cannot buy the medicine that can save their lives."

He put down the document in his hand and spread it on the table.

"Tomorrow morning, when the cancer patients of the eagle nation realize this, who do you think they will blame?"