"Charles Stross - SEAQ And Destroy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

A press conference has been scheduled by the Soviet Embassy in nine minutes time
and will be covered by this service.
Just in:
At the press conferance in Washington that has just ended, the U.S. Treasury
Department spokesman, Mr John Flatbush, read the following statement but left the platform
before he could be asked any questions:
"At nine hundred hours today the Treasury Department monitoring service became
aware of the serious nature of the current Russian attack on London. We are of course
monitoring the present scenario in real-time, but we do not believe that there are any grounds
for alarm in this country. The days of the great corporate raiders тАУ Ikahn and Boesky and the
like тАУ are over, thanks to the decisive lead provided by the Jackson administration in re-
structuring the U.S. economy. There are no grounds to fear a joint Japanese-Soviet attack on
our corporate heartland, but in order to prevent any localized slides we are taking action to
freeze European assets held in U.S. stocks and bonds. These shares will be underwritten by
the Federal Reserve Bank for the duration of the тАУ er, instability.
"It falls to me to say тАУ off the record тАУ that any of our boys who go in there deserve
the best of luck and our encouragment in fighting the good fight and getting while the getting's
good on foreign soil! This could be the offshore investment opportunity of the century, and I
for one am gonna be phoning my broker as soon as this conference is over. Goodbye."

Newsburst:13:27 G.M.T.
At 13:03 today, the Soviet trade attache, Ms. V. I. Retshuchenko, released the
following statement, reproduced in its entirety:
"My friends, this morning forces based within the RFSFR launched an economic
attack upon the United States of Europe, with the goal of dominating those states. On behalf
of the government of the RFSFR, may I express our sincere sympathy for the victims of this
unprecedented offensive; unfortunately we are unable to prevent further incursions. The
hostile forces appear to be a secret consortium of Soviet industry, including Mikoyan-
Gurevitch design bureau, Glavkosmos, and the First Consolidated Peoples' Bank of
Azerbaijan; these corporations appear to be co-operating with extra-national powers of
unknown identity.
"As you know, such an attack would have been both impossible and implausible if the
RFSFR still retained the old, monolithic industrial centralism of the decadent Lenin-Brezhnev
era. Following the marked improvements in international progress and trade of the past
decade, however, certain organisations listed on the Moscow stock exchange have decided
that the Soviet economy cannot support their investment programs. They appear to have
decided that a leveraged buy-out of the entire Western economy would be a suitable way of
resolving their balance of payments surplus, and unfortunately the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union is unable to restrain them.
"Bluntly, such a sequence of events was not considered possible, and no restraining
legislation has been drafted. The Politburo is not sanguine about the consequences,
however. We have no desire to return to the isolationist, Cold War mentality of the seventies
and eighties, and in any event such a policy will inevitably induce considerable public
discontent.
"President Boris Yeltsin has expressed his condolences for the victims of the conflict,
and has promised maximum cooperation with the European authorities in an attempt to
negotiate an end to the shares war before the G-9 talks are jeopardised.
"Thank you very much indeed for coming here. Goodbye."

Newsburst:14:56 G.M.T.