xp_logs | Sanguinicity - Salting the Market

X-Force works out an odd way to go after Strucker's estate - stock market maniupulation.

“I miss de days when you could take out de records of a bank by blowing de whole place up.” Remy said, tossing down his pen. The table was littered with printouts – mostly financial documentation and spreadsheets – and carefully structured org charts of investments and their relative position on different stock exchanges. Despite his complaint, this wasn’t Remy’s first walk around the complex financial systems of Europe. As Gambit, he’d learned to manipulate it; first to be safely paid and manage his money, and later as an operational tool in his contracts for the Agency. But untangling the financials of this bank was a scale again above what he was used to. “So, if Remy have dis right, dey’ve managed to keep all of Strucker’s money off de books but still under dere control?”

"It's all rather pretty," said Emma, admiringly. She'd always enjoyed a well-managed scheme of financial deception and this was a very neatly devised one. The profits were lovely but not disturbingly so and they'd avoided the Madoff mistake of not undertaking anything like
the number of transactions necessary to make the money. It was a dizzyingly complex web of transactions and shell games that kept money moving fast enough to be plausible and cover over the fact that there was a lot less made on the legitimate transactions than moved through
the accounts. "And yes, that's exactly what they've done." Her fingers tapped on a couple of points on the pages she was holding. "You can see it here and here - the places where the monies sliding through the cracks between accounts. Oh, taking this apart will be fun. Pick apart the weak points and it should unravel rather quickly."

Marie-Ange, like the others, had the printouts in front of her. But unlike the others, she also had a deck of plain playing cards that she had been idly shuffling and cutting with her free hand as she made notes. At her elbow was a side table, with a glass of water, and a empty wine glass, and a plate with a few crumbs of chocolate left. The brownies and port wine were long gone, and Marie-Ange's expression was distracted, and relaxed, uncommonly so. "You have a strange idea of fun." She said, voice crisp despite the combination of chemicals. "The larger accounts, they are long-term investments. Eastern Europe is not the most stable part of the world, it would be terrible if it was apparent some of those investments would not pay out, no?"

"It's worse than that," replied Emma and the only part of her smile that wasn't positively evil was very smug instead. "They've invested in Icelandic banks. And even better. Irish banks. A few rumours in the right places and they might find that their credit lines start getting rather tighter. Very, very tight. Perhaps even non-existent."

Jake's copies of spreadsheets had as many nonsensical doodles written over them as meaningful markings. The yellow highlighter in hand flicked over one of the rows, leaving a trail behind it. "Rumors are easy enough. Just need to decide which of these suits we want to pin as 'traitor.'" His eyes still following the yellow line, he nodded toward the pictures of a number of bank officials stacked beside him without looking up. "The papers love it when when someone on the inside gives them a scoop. Half the time, if you slip them a few printouts, you can even get the reporters to comb through the spreadsheets for you."

"We don't want to lay it on too thick. Remy not an investment banker, but even I know de difference between calculated risk and actual liability, and if dey come out swinging wit' a response that makes sense, other banks might bail dem out." Remy said, looking over the
sheets and trying to keep it straight. Oddly enough, Gambit had a better head for the market than Remy did, even if he still had the memories. "So we got, what, a lot of de bank's capital tied up in long term investments. Enough dat de secret accounts are what is maintaining liquidity. How do we hit dat? De market? Day trading?"

"Squeeze their credit," replied Emma, still perusing the information in front of her. "All the real money is in long-term investments. It's the shadow money that's running through the short-term liquid accounts. They've got a series of undertakings that let them roll over their credit at set intervals. Get them to the point where they tell their creditors that they'll have to breach the undertakings, they won't get credit extended and they'll have to get a lot of cash very quickly. The long-term investments aren't very liquid," Emma's fingers tapped the pages again.

"You can see it here. Factories in the old East Germany, commercial property, managed investment companies. Lots of stuff wrapped up in commercial trusts. The investments take a long time to sell on the open market. If they need to pay back loans right now because they're breaching undertakings, then they're going to have to bring the shadow money out to pay back the loans or go bankrupt. If we start a run with one or two of their creditors, panic will spread. Particularly if we've got some interesting information about the future of some of those markets." Emma's glance at Marie-Ange was mildly speculative.

"Yes, that would be why the brownies." Chocolate only had a mild effect on Marie-Ange. But the marijuana -in- the brownies was known to both relax her and cause the precognition to run closer to the surface. She would pay in headaches later, but for now, it was the best way to et fast, accurate predictions without having to figure out a way to do a tarot reading for a tock market. "Like I said, Eastern Europe is not a stable market at the moment." She set the deck of cards down - it was mostly to keep her fingers busy - and reached across the table for the papers Emma had indicated.

Cracks across some of the loan documents, only visible to her.. "These factories are not in as good of repair as the owners stated." Marie-Ange said, tracing the outline of the crack only she could see with her fingernail. "They probably bribed the building inspectors, we can send in our own." One of them had to know someone.

"Well, actual value is easy enough to leak," Jake agreed. "A bit of insinuation of things that were ...overlooked, worry about the loan, guilty conscience what that might do for some of those poor factory workers. Easy angle to exploit, but is it enough?"

"It's a start. If dere liquidity is tied up, like you say, a few rumours should freeze any legitimate sources of credit, at least in de short term. Compromised assets are hard to borrow against. But we going to need to extend dem, make dem push Strucker's money out on de market in order to maintain dere holdings, and de only way Remy sees dat working involves manipulating de markets dey invested in. We can't do dat, can we?" Remy said, looking to Emma for her take.

"Of course we can," replied Emma, barely looking up from the papers in front of her. "The financial world is ridiculously nervous about money and private banks right now. Particularly anything with investments in the Euro zone. Start some rumours, have important people make the wrong announcements to the wrong journalists, create some holes in data and once the first creditor decides to call in a loan, the rest will fall like dominoes." Emma's smile was fleeting. "Bankers are sheep, really. It's why it's always such a pleasure to fleece them."

"We just have to do this several dozen times over, to make sure all of the leaks that the money flows out of are not able to be plugged up." Marie-Ange started methodically drawing lines down the list of assets, crossing off several without even seeming to look closely at the paper. "I need another pen, perhaps two. I can mark these into categories of potential usefulness to us, but it is easier if I work in colors. Otherwise I am just going to confuse my own precognition and start drawing flowers on the papers, and then Remy will give me an angry look and fire me for being useless." Perhaps not that last one. Maybe.

"Emma, Marie-Ange is going to be you resource for dis. Between her and Doug, we have to be able to come up wit' a way to extend dem in de short term just long enough so when we crash dere systems, de whole bank comes down wit' it." Remy stood up and tossed some notes to Jake. "Come on, Gavin. Let's see de best places to spread a little disinformation."

"Don't you dare get fired," Jake warned, trying not to look too hasty as he stood to get away from the numbers and spreadsheets. "After all, I'm the only one that gets to play dumb to get out of work around here," he sent the jibe after Remy before following him out.

Emma made a vague farewell noise as Jake and Remy walked away, but her attention was thoroughly caught by the financial information in front of her. She tore her gaze away long enough to glance at Marie-Ange's spreadsheet and switch her entire attention to that. "Ah, Marie-Ange, when this is done, let me talk you into a life of international financial crime," she said. "We'll own better shoes than anyone has ever dreamed of."

Jubilee and Amanda do a little recon of the bank.

The Bahnhofstrasse was perhaps the single greatest representation of the concentration of wealth in Europe. Set in the centre of Zurich, it was home to the head offices of Switzerland’s largest banks. On the fringes of the district sat the offices of a hundred others; lesser known but occasionally as discretely powerful. Die Kreditinstitut Schmidt was one such bank, located just off the General Guisen Quai on the banks of Lake Zurich. It wasn’t an imposing structure; a six story building only partly separated from the rest of the block, with a more modern three support complex to its west and an old iron wrought fence surrounding all but the building’s face to the street.
Jubilee had been seated on a low wall for most of the day, a sketch pad balanced against her knees and black smudge marks stained her fingers. Should anyone be questioned later they would note a blue eyed teenage art student of Asian descent, whose clothing was unremarkable from that of any other teenager in the city.

What Jubilee was actually doing was sketching the layouts of camera placements and shift changes.

For her part, Amanda had chosen a public bathroom to work from. Standing with your feet submerged in the floor for a couple of hours wasn't exactly unobtrusive, and she'd needed to be within range of the building she wanted to 'see'. So she'd 'borrowed' an 'Out of Order' sign from the maintenance closet, hung it on her chosen cubicle and settled in.

Zurich wasn't big, but it was old. Old and slightly fusty, to Amanda's senses. It had taken a while to properly merge since merging with Zurich was a bit like trying to have a conversation with a senile old relative - she kept finding herself wandering off in all directions as the city tried to 'show' her what it thought was important. But eventually she managed a compromise and she was examining the bank building from the city's point of view.

The building was new, which meant it was hard to get a grip on. The city was slow and ponderous and to it the bank was a mere gnat in terms of lifespan. The street below, however, was not, and she was able to find several potential access points from the maintenance and sewerage tunnels that run below the city. Gotta love the Swiss, she thought disjointedly as she/Zurich 'wandered' through a series of well-maintained tunnels. Every neat and in its place.

Jubilee took note of the shift change, and stored it away in the folder in her head she usually called 'mission critical items'. "Shift change," she noted softly, pressing against an earring that doubled as a bluetooth communication device with her mobile.

The sudden voice in her ear startled the witch, and for a moment she was in two places at once - an impressively clean public toilet and an impressively maintained underground tunnel. "~Copy that,~" she replied, belatedly realizing she was speaking in an old form of German. "Um, copy that. Think you have enough? I'll do one more sweep to see if there's anything on the roof, if I can get Zurich to cooperate. 'S a stubborn old bastard of a place."

"Most old things are, look at Farouk," Jubilee muttered, scratching at her ear and looking through several drawings to mask the conversation. Anyone observing would see a discontent student, trying to find a particular drawing. "I've mapped the cameras, and their shift changes are predictable in the non-predictability. We can get Doug to give us the pattern."

While most security organizations sought to make it difficult for thieves by shaking up their routines, it was almost impossible for a human being to be truly random. Something for which Jubilee was grateful, considering it made their job easier.

"Do your sweep, and we'll meet back at the hotel?"

"Sounds like a plan. Make sure there's food when I get in? This is taking a bit out of me and Zurich tastes like the power equivalent of sago pudding."