A few minutes later, Mr. Fox's assistant delivers two newspapers.
One is from four months ago, and the other is from this week.
Financial companies like Mr. Fox's are actually very concerned about financial trends in the country as a whole and in the international community; they work with money every day and know exactly what it all means.
They are also very concerned about changes in social patterns, such as the employment rate, the unemployment rate, and social security.
If unemployment continues to rise, they will have to lower interest rates and at the same time reduce large loans to reduce risk, which will also make their business more attractive.
If the country's economy improves significantly, they raise some interest rates at the same time, encouraging people to borrow more because they can afford to pay it back.
Every day, Mr. Fox's assistant reads a large number of newspapers, which are used to analyze some of the next situations in the country, and then decides whether to put an early end to some business or pretend to forget about it.
It's definitely not a very simple and straightforward business, those people don't make it big and it's hard to do it for a long time, only people like Mr. Fox can run such a business for a long time.
That's why he paid good money and hired a college student to help him; he saw it as a business, not a way to make a quick buck.
Lynch opened the paper and leafed through it for some time, about ten minutes or so, and Mr. Fox never disturbed him and had coffee and cigarettes brought to him.
He had a vague expectation in his heart that this ordinary person named Lin Qi would definitely give him a surprise.
It wasn't an uninformed guess, it was something he had observed.
There was no way an ordinary layman like Lynch could remain calm when he was invited here, let alone be able to meet his eyes when he showed his killing intent.
He wasn't an ordinary kid of Mr. Fox's age, Lynch was just a kid, he was only twenty years old.
Ten minutes later, Lynch sketched some lines with the pen in his hand and then placed both papers in front of Mr. Fox at the same time, "I've drawn horizontal lines under the ones you need to read so you can see them more visually.
Both Mr. Fox and his assistant looked at it carefully, and after reading it back and forth a few times, the two men didn't have the slightest clue, it was full of information about some real estate agents, and they didn't find anything at all.
Mr. Fox was a little confused, "I don't know what these mean, do they have any special meaning?"
Lynch wasn't annoyed at all, he was patient, because with a great client and money in his pocket, anyone who needs money can be patient.
He walked over to Mr. Fox, and his men tried to stop him, but were stopped by Mr. Fox, which meant that Lynch had won Mr. Fox's trust for a short time.
If he can accomplish what he said before, that trust will last a long time.
"This paper contains rental information for two street-level apartments, including this one for ..." Lynch pointed to where he'd underlined and didn't continue.
Mr. Fox subconsciously picked that up.
"One hundred and thirty-five dollars."
Lynch nodded, "Yes, one hundred and thirty-five dollars, let's ignore everything else and see how much the house next door costs.
Mr. Fox very cooperatively moved his eyes to the information drawn across the line on the other paper and very cooperatively continued, "One hundred and seventy-two dollars!"
"These two apartments are on opposite sides of the street and not more than a hundred yards apart in a straight line, and from these price changes, Mr. Fox, what do you find?"
Mr. Fox, after a moment's meditation, had begun to think seriously and said, "An increase of thirty-seven dollars in the monthly rent!
One thing Lynch has always believed in his proven and successful past cases is that getting these participants more involved in the case can save a lot of time and avoid problems that people may not have thought of on their own.
They convince themselves and are convinced that the conclusions they reach are correct, and this is especially evident in math problems.
Until it was made clear that the answers to some of the math questions were wrong, each individual respondent was convinced that his or her answer was right and that someone else's was wrong.
Mr. Fox's sense of deeper involvement through a simple "math equation" began to overwhelm him with a sense of hypocrisy.
Surrounded by a self-created and false sense of security.
He wouldn't think Lynch was a liar, because these weren't things Lynch was telling him, they were conclusions he'd come to on his own, through his own wise head, through his own serious thinking, and he believed in his own conclusions.
"Higher rents mean it takes more money to buy these houses for four months..." Lynch said and paused, "No, it's actually going up every day, a little bit, you may not be able to notice it, but it's changing again, do you admit that, Mr. Fox?"
Mr. Fox nodded, "So what does this have to do with our previous business?"
"Of course it does, Mr. Fox, the houses are there, they don't change over time like a few more bricks or a few less tiles.
"What it was when it was built, what it is now, that hasn't changed, it's constant, but the price has changed, what does that mean?"
Without waiting for Mr. Fox to think about it, Lynch gave the answer, because it was an answer Mr. Fox couldn't come up with in his head.
What he does is point people in the direction of the nooks and crannies he wants them to discover at the right time, rather than encouraging them to think outside the box!
"If the value of a thing doesn't change much, but the process of 'paying' for it changes, it can only mean that the value of the thing used to mark the pair has changed."
"In other words, the currency in our hands for the last four months." At one point, Lynch pulled a coin from his pocket and placed it between the knuckles of his thumb and forefinger.
He flicked it, and a subtle but audible metallic trembling caught the eye of Mr. Fox, his assistant, and the bodyguard beside him, whose eyes fell on the flying coin.
Lynch said confidently, "It's depreciated and has depreciated about twenty-two to twenty-five percent in a four month period, Mr. Fox."
Mr. Fox's attention was drawn away from the nickel that had landed motionless on the newspaper, and he began to think seriously about Lynch's words, looking at the assistant at his side.
The assistant was a little embarrassed, he wasn't a finance major, he was just studying management, and he wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the fact that Mr. Fox's side of the family paid better, and if it wasn't for the fact that Mr. Fox was his father.
He felt that Lynch's words were not quite right, but he felt that there was nothing obviously wrong with them, and in the process Lynch used gold for a second round of examples, instilling the concepts of "devaluation" and "money is a good" into the room.
He didn't lie because they were true, and he had no problem with his examples, even including the fact that ten years ago you could buy a newspaper for five cents, and now it takes fifty cents.
Newspapers are still newspapers, whether it's ink or paper, and the processes and procedures for producing them haven't changed much; it's not that newspapers have become more expensive, it's that money has been devalued.
Gradually coming to his senses, Mr. Fox felt a little alarmed at once, and changing his sitting position, he said stiffly, "But our interest rates are high, and some of them are compounded!"
He tried to reassure himself in this way, but those fragile feelings of security were destroyed seconds later by Lynch's laughter.
"I know, Mr. Fox, the problem is that the currency we're devaluing isn't the one you can take out and put in front of people, it's all your assets! All your assets are devaluing at a rate of five percent a month, and it's a form of 'compound interest' if you can't get all your money to the IRS soon enough to do the final paperwork.
Lynch returned to his chair across the table and sat down, shrugging his shoulders and spreading his hands, "All that wealth you're so proud of right now might not even amount to shit in a few years!"
"Do you care about that lousy ten percent now?"