Page 108 - TruthAboutLyingFinal
P. 108
The Truth About Lying
At 10:31, trading slowed.
At 10:38, banks stopped lending to one another.
At 10:45, calls came in from London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Toronto.
Same pattern.
A small correction.
A connected lie.
A larger confession.
A body refusing to let the mouth continue.
At 10:52, the New York Stock Exchange halted financial stocks.
NASDAQ followed. Then Chicago. Then London. Then Tokyo.
By 11:07, the financial system had not crashed.
It had stopped.
No one knew which numbers could be trusted anymore.
No one knew who was still able to lie.
No one knew what anything was worth without the old layer of confidence holding it in place.
Henry’s laptop chimed.
URGENT: Verax integration has triggered cascade failure in financial disclosure systems. Markets frozen pending emergency review. Conference call in 15 minutes.
He read it twice.
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