“The era of cheap & abundant energy is long gone. Money supply & debt have grown faster than real economy. Debt saturation is now a real risk, requiring a global scale reset.”"We are now in new era of expensive unconventional energy

[Wombat + 1,028]

On 2/20/2020 at 3:01 PM, 0R0 said:

That is why I am posting here. Point out what is incomprehensible. I will try to be clearer. 

I have a simple analysis for the Fed and Repo. I may have posted it here. 

There are two thresholds that the Fed hit that would cause a repo malfunction. Neither of which was apparently considered when the Fed ran up rates while tightening reserves. I call it a double barreled approach to creating disaster.

The first threshold is soft and conditional. When IOER (the rate the Fed pays for banks holding excess reserves) is close to or higher than most of the treasury curve, then banks prefer to hold on to reserves to fill out their excess capital requirement instead of treasuries. In which case, when the yield curve nears inversion or well into it, the banks require about 10% of M2 in reserves.  It isn't a legal requirement, but they will simply hold onto those reserves and will not lend them into the repo market. During Dec 2018 and again in Sep 2019, this threshold was hit as Fed funds rates went up and treasury rates fell to nearing inversion in Dec 18 and after the Fed lowered rates the treasury yields fell even further to inversion in Sep 19.  

The second threshold is that US financial market participants need clearing money - checkables and physical currency to carry out transactions same day. Those must be fully reserved. However, the Eurodollar system also needs both repo (other side of the repo is checkable cash) and its own US checkable accounts. As it happens, the Fed did not ask Eurodollar foreign institutions what they needed or were doing, nor bothered to calculate it out and subtract it from their reckoning of available reserves (checkable accounts and repo volumes of foreign banks). 

There has been a building up or foreign repo and checkable foreign owned deposits since before the Great Financial Crisis. The Fed didn't pay attention, since they just ignore the Eurodollar market despite it being sometimes  a bigger dollar market than the internal US market. So whenever Eurodollar markets are stressed for dollars they do repos in large volumes in the US. If you subtract those from reserves, then we were below 0 free reserves for the internal US market. All had been used. 

So we can see in this chart, where total reserves are in drab green, the 10% of M2 is light blue, Red is foreign repos, and cyan is foreign checkable accounts. So we subtract the foreign cash assets and repos from reserves and we have Net domestic reserves in purple. In Sep 19 (last quarterly data point on this chart) we see that net reserves were 0. Hence all hell breaks out in the Repo market. 

Don't worry about the negative values before the GFC, as the banks were allowed to borrow reserves as needed, so they were never important till the crisis.  

   

I warned the Fed that they were about to lose control of rates but they didn't listen and Heloc's went to 12%! The idiots always act "after the fact"?

[Wombat + 1,028]

On 2/13/2020 at 6:43 AM, wrs said:

EVs aren't near as fun, they don't rev to 8500rpm and have 800hp.

 

The new electric Hummer has 1000 horses and quicker than that Porsche!

[Wombat + 1,028]

On 2/15/2020 at 12:09 AM, Anthony Okrongly said:

Serf. (thanks)

Regarding Expansion - "The Collapse of Complex Societies" by Joseph Tainter postulates that it IS the infrastructure that Causes a big problem in complex societies.  Case in point - When America was electrified it transformed society. The benefits of electrification were huge. It extended the day for work, it added machines to the homes, etc. But, when the electricity system needs to be replaced there is actually a higher real cost than the original installation (for many reason I won't go into)... but assuming the same costs to replace as there was to install... there is NO NEW benefit. So, it's an expense that doesn't bring any new positives to the economy.  That same thing is true of roads and bridges. So, while expansion may not be necessary, replacement is. Can concrete be recycled? I don't know. Or do we have to make new concrete (high energy) to replace existing infrastructure without any new benefit?  

I get your point... but Tainter would say the replacement costs are MORE expensive to a complex society than the original implementation costs. As a matter of fact the point of his book is that the maintenance of legacy system (territory, infrastructure, complex education systems, specializations, etc.) actually CAUSE the collapse of complex civilizations - which are then either broken up (Soviet Union) and devolve into a lower energy state (which has been the case) or they are absorbed into a larger society that is in an earlier stage of development (think China). 

The argument is that America is not an "empire" because we don't "conquer" and "occupy" other nations.  But as pointed out before one soldier can only control 100 people.  One banker can control 10,000.  As long as they use our SWIFT banking system, borrow money from us, feed into our economy economically, etc. they are conquered and we are an "empire" with all the associated costs.  Do you think Rome built those roads and conquered those people for glory?  No it was for resources, manpower, energy (slaves), etc.

The biggest "complex society" cost America has is our military. Like Rome did, we have a global empire that feeds our entire, particularly our financial system, by enforcing American economic hegemony. As stated earlier, this is great when we reap the spoils (new markets of low cost labor and consumption) but once that resource has been integrated we are still spending the same amount every year with no new benefit. Once others start to see cracks then they challenge us (terrorism at this point) and the actual costs of maintaining legacy systems (war) increase dramatically.

I've read "Empty Planet" and really enjoyed it.  Eye opening, particularly regarding Brazil and India, and how immigrants pretty much immediately adopt the fertility rate of their new home country. I have it on Audible so I cant immediately access the charts, but I think he says we will get to 9 billion in 2050 and then decline on a straight line to 7.5 billion in 2100. So we still have 30 years of growth. So we still have an entire generation and about 20% more population to grow. (7.5 billion to 9 billion).

That decline rate can increase in Western nations based on economics. The Top causes of death in failing Western economies (or at least the fastest growing causes) are suicide, alcoholism, and drug overdose. When the Soviet Union collapsed those numbers went through the roof. Those numbers are rising in the U.S. These, in my opinion, are what I would term "failing economic opportunity" deaths. When you're 25 years old your economy is basically improving no matter what you do.  At 50 it takes a good and truly growing economy to keep real optimism. 10,000 new fast food jobs don't help a 50 year old man who just got laid off from a mid-career job.  

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/11/29/us-life-expectancy-suicide-50-year-peak-and-drugs-cause-death/2146829002/

The real questions I have are:

1. How much of energy growth over the next 50 years will come from population growth and how much will come from rising standards of living in the existing population.  Even the "extremist" view of declining global population has a 20% increase before any decline.Obviously where the increase occurs has a big impact on the accompanying energy growth. The population can shrink and still have rising energy use due to rising standards of living.  Disaster-case is that we have both rising population and rising global energy standards of living over the next 30 years. 

 - 2nd part - is the U.S. an island to global energy demand growth?  So far we have been, but China and Russia have taken a much bigger footprint as both consumers and protectors of Middle Eastern Oil. We have hitched our proverbial star to Western Hemisphere energy for good or for ill.

2.  If the African continent's average standard of living rose to include cars that would obviously explode energy demand beyond all ability to produce. The chance of that happening (I think) is pretty low. But what is the reasonable scenario regarding rising energy use in 2nd/3rd world nations for cooking, heating, air conditioning, transportation and manufacturing?  

3. When is peak shale? A recent article on oilprice said peak shale in North Dakota is 5 years away. It won't be 2020, no matter what anyone says. But it will probably be earlier than 2030... agree or disagree?  A 10 year window on a peak of what is the "game changing" oil producer for the world really means the game has already changed, does it not. Isn't guessing the exact year just arranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

4. Is tight oil the last hurrah? I'm a fan of the efficient markets model regarding energy in particular - meaning that the energy players KNOW what's available and they are exploiting the least expensive new oil now (onshore tight oil), so any new exploitation will be more expensive by default. 

5. When is actual "Twilight" in the desert when it comes to the Middle East?

6. As previously discussed, does "money" really matter when it comes to oil?  Case in point, we learned that money doesn't actually matter when it comes to the big banks. 2008 was basically the collapse of western capitalism. If capitalism had been allowed to operate then the entire system would have failed. The global credit markets (in case you forgot) completely froze. Money was not going to move at all.  Without money flow All the banks were toast. Add to the the fact that the actual costs of derivatives exceeded the capital capacity of all the banks in question... and you get a total collapse. But that was not "allowed" to happen. The U.S. government simply rewrote the rules of what the government and the fed were allowed to do, and they printed the solution. In the case of a real oil production collapse do they do that again. Is oil production "too big to fail?" The U.S. government could simply choose to do "monetary easing" via oil production.  It won't be popular... but how popular is bailing out the big banks.  When the spit hits the SPAM "the will of the people" is completely ignored for the "good of the system." So, is there a scenario where shale production continues at ANY price? Because it is possible to flood the shale fields with money that requires no return and get everyone pumping everything.

I think we learned that wars don't make MORE oil production, so I don't think war will be a viable answer.  We might do it, but I don't see it increasing global oil production.

7. When... in your opinion... do we cross the Rubicon when it comes to oil demand outstripping oil production globally?

8. Does "demand destruction" in the West from a few electric cars and a few wind turbines really happen fast enough that we don't cross the line? I think politics can make the shortage happen faster (outlaw flaring, don't build pipelines, etc.) but I don't think regulation is set to INCREASE production at all above current estimates. 

MY GUESS:

My guess - going from the last question up... is

- The government monetizes Alternative Energy production... so that demand destruction happens in spite of the costs associated.. You've already seen this in Germany where they have massive excess alt-energy capacity that serve no purpose. They still need the game changing technology which is energy storage (liquid metal batteries coming to a utility near you. - See a company called Ambri - taken from the word Cambridge which is where it was developed at MIT)

- It won't happen fast enough and demand will outstrip supply in a surging manner starting in the 2020's, Prices will surge causing recessions which destroy demand which causes prices to collapse which causes growth etc.  

- Twilight in the Desert is here to match Twilight in West Texas soon arriving. I think we have seen Saudi Peak production.  Right now they have some slack, but 10, 10.5 mbd feels like their limit... and they are using more as they grow which limits exports.

- I think peak shale happens in this decade and it's a slow decline from there. Energy growth will occur in the East - China/India and Africa and we will become more and more "Island Americas (north and south)" regarding energy.  We will stop fighting wars in the Middle East and we will also stop Chinese development of South American oil  (Monroe Doctrine 2030).Aka - "What's a girl to do with that big, shiny NAVY?"

- Once we get to true declining population all bets are off... lots of books will need to be written... but the world has never experienced it, so "I dunno." Those are questions that will be addressed by your grandkids and their kids. 

1: Yes, concrete has been recycled for decades, 2: I see half/half growth of energy demand rising pop'n/rising living standards, 3: Good question, I reckon 2023 coz that when all the pipelines and port infrastructure will be complete, 4: just as much tight oil in Australia, China and other countries but just not economical yet due to more complex geology. US lucky, tight oil resembles "stack of plates", everywhere else, "broken stack of plates", 5: Twilight in Mid-East 50 years away, 6: Yes, money matters to oil, that is why half your shale producers hedged their production at $60/bbl just before X-mas, 7: Won't happen due to EV's, peak demand was last year, 8: see"7"

[Wombat + 1,028]

On 2/15/2020 at 6:30 AM, 0R0 said:

Lets start with this.

The system that blew up was the Eurodollar system. You should look up Jeff Snider's presentations and interviews on that. It blew up because of over-leverage that made it susceptible to shocks, and China's bubble that was uniquely responsible for the credit expansion due to the way it externalized its monetary expansion and how it translated into margin compression in the industries of the rest of the planet as Chinese credit expansion was expressed in a commodities (oil) bubble. It could not have happened without China's input. As I detailed in a post some weeks ago. And as I have shown from an internal China perspective in several posts in the China focused threads. You should look for them. 

The 2000 peak would have been it had it not been for China. OECD in 2000 had the demographic of China in 2020. I.e. a terminal demographic. The US is the only one of OECD+China that has a larger millennial population as a prominent demographic. So the US had the potential for recovery, and it did, and a bit earlier than demographics would have predicted because of the sudden drop of energy costs in the US and its energy independence. 

So what happened is easy to see in those posts. There was a dreadful regulatory push out of Basel III to constrain credit growth. It was the driving force for the financial collapse till the worst of it, the "mark to market" rules were turned off. The entire thing still hangs on the financial system like a mill stone. The second issue is the collapse of the CDS system of hedging risk of low quality debt, as it turned out that the capital pool that wrote those was not large enough to actually back them up. It was a collapse of the asset pricing mathematical models that has left the financial industry in fear and froze balance sheets. The economics were unhappy but not outright bad. 

There was no collapse of capitalism, there was a collapse in the West's ability to absorb China's growth (exports) via distorted financial signals managed by the CCP. 

With all due respect Oro, what do you expect when there is $1 QUADRILLION of derivatives out there? That is more than 10X global GDP and it is pure theft? How did Soros make $10 BILLION by shorting the pound?!? It has to come from SOMEONE'S POCKET! In the end, he stole it from EVERYONES' pocket via the taxman?!?

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

1 hour ago, Wombat said:

The new electric Hummer has 1000 horses and quicker than that Porsche!

And I suppose that at 1000 horsepower, most of which would be unusable in any case, the price will be attractive to those who may have been considering changing to an EV?

[0R0 + 6,251]

46 minutes ago, Wombat said:

With all due respect Oro, what do you expect when there is $1 QUADRILLION of derivatives out there? That is more than 10X global GDP and it is pure theft? How did Soros make $10 BILLION by shorting the pound?!? It has to come from SOMEONE'S POCKET! In the end, he stole it from EVERYONES' pocket via the taxman?!?

The derivatives are 92-96% netted since the late 1990s, Greenspan's biggest effort. The problem remaining was that the netting agreements would be in court in the case of bankruptcy, so they put into Dodd Frank some legal infrastructure to make the sums that go into bankruptcy just the net sums of derivative relationships.  That liquidation statement that the Fed requires, the "living will" for banks, includes how net positions are cleared. 

But the main thing to understand about derivatives is that the way you normally get out of a position is by keeping the original contract in place and adding on a new one that undoes some portion or all  of the original. That is because the old contract had been hedged with numerous other contracts, so can't be unwound. That is why they pile up so high. In the Volcker rule world, instead of making things simpler, the bankers still write up the same derivatives, but put hedges to each side on the exchanges. Standardized contracts are all forced onto the exchanges. Where instead of a known counterparty with know risks associated with it, you have a no name account at a brokerage, could be a hedge fund with unknown leverage - say like worse than the  30:1 that killed Lehman. 

The traders provide liquidity, just as shorts provide demand for hated stocks. They get paid for the service on net. The best and most daring will make huge amounts once in a blue moon. The magical thinking that  markets can provide their own liquidity without resorting to an expandable bank balance sheet with a central bank backing it brought us to sudden liquidity events. When things break, there is a vacuum under the market. No bid. That is how removing the specialist system got you flash crashes for stocks. The current system works well 99% of the time, but when things fall apart, you need someone to step in and make a proprietary bid backed up with central bank liquidity. I have not found out who does the job these days, but it does seem to require some volume of repos with the Fed's dealer network. 

To get a good primer on the background for the crisis and the structure and functions of the Eurodollar market look up Jeff Snider's Eurodollar university on Macrovoices. 

[Anthony Okrongly + 114]

8 hours ago, Wombat said:

1: Yes, concrete has been recycled for decades, 2: I see half/half growth of energy demand rising pop'n/rising living standards, 3: Good question, I reckon 2023 coz that when all the pipelines and port infrastructure will be complete, 4: just as much tight oil in Australia, China and other countries but just not economical yet due to more complex geology. US lucky, tight oil resembles "stack of plates", everywhere else, "broken stack of plates", 5: Twilight in Mid-East 50 years away, 6: Yes, money matters to oil, that is why half your shale producers hedged their production at $60/bbl just before X-mas, 7: Won't happen due to EV's, peak demand was last year, 8: see"7"

Peak Demand was "last year?"  Seriously? The rest of it's fine.  But the statement that peak demand was last year is .... we'll call it bold. 

Edited February 21, 2020 by Anthony Okrongly

[Wombat + 1,028]

11 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

And I suppose that at 1000 horsepower, most of which would be unusable in any case, the price will be attractive to those who may have been considering changing to an EV?

Dunno about the price, I guess it will be very high, just like the original Hummer? All I do know is that that the 1000hp means it goes from o to 60 mph in 3 seconds flat! I call that ''useable" Electric cars have greater torque than ICE cars.

[Wombat + 1,028]

4 hours ago, Anthony Okrongly said:

Peak Demand was "last year?"  Seriously? The rest of it's fine.  But the statement that peak demand was last year is .... we'll call it bold. 

Not if we have a pandemic, which looks increasingly likely?!?

[Wombat + 1,028]

5 hours ago, Anthony Okrongly said:

Peak Demand was "last year?"  Seriously? The rest of it's fine.  But the statement that peak demand was last year is .... we'll call it bold. 

Peak CO2 emissions also occurred in 2019.

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

1 hour ago, Wombat said:

Not if we have a pandemic, which looks increasingly likely?!?

Maybe not. Greffex uses an adenovirus model that can be genetically engineered at will: what they call "Plug and Play." 

They claim to have a vaccine for the Coronavirus. I suspect they do. 

The old way to build a vaccine was to use dead or attenuated virus particles--unaltered. This new technique uses an adenovirus "platform," plugging in certain genes to signal for an immune response to a particularly deadly antigen, and these things can be built in the lab within a few weeks. 

They still have to run some animal trials, but it shouldn't be long before it's ready. They did this on an National Institutes of Health grant so it's not some pie in the sky.  

[Wombat + 1,028]

14 hours ago, 0R0 said:

The derivatives are 92-96% netted since the late 1990s, Greenspan's biggest effort. The problem remaining was that the netting agreements would be in court in the case of bankruptcy, so they put into Dodd Frank some legal infrastructure to make the sums that go into bankruptcy just the net sums of derivative relationships.  That liquidation statement that the Fed requires, the "living will" for banks, includes how net positions are cleared. 

But the main thing to understand about derivatives is that the way you normally get out of a position is by keeping the original contract in place and adding on a new one that undoes some portion or all  of the original. That is because the old contract had been hedged with numerous other contracts, so can't be unwound. That is why they pile up so high. In the Volcker rule world, instead of making things simpler, the bankers still write up the same derivatives, but put hedges to each side on the exchanges. Standardized contracts are all forced onto the exchanges. Where instead of a known counterparty with know risks associated with it, you have a no name account at a brokerage, could be a hedge fund with unknown leverage - say like worse than the  30:1 that killed Lehman. 

The traders provide liquidity, just as shorts provide demand for hated stocks. They get paid for the service on net. The best and most daring will make huge amounts once in a blue moon. The magical thinking that  markets can provide their own liquidity without resorting to an expandable bank balance sheet with a central bank backing it brought us to sudden liquidity events. When things break, there is a vacuum under the market. No bid. That is how removing the specialist system got you flash crashes for stocks. The current system works well 99% of the time, but when things fall apart, you need someone to step in and make a proprietary bid backed up with central bank liquidity. I have not found out who does the job these days, but it does seem to require some volume of repos with the Fed's dealer network. 

To get a good primer on the background for the crisis and the structure and functions of the Eurodollar market look up Jeff Snider's Eurodollar university on Macrovoices. 

I am afraid I do not have time to study Eurodollar aspect at this time (full-time trader), but I did read Bernanke's autobiography which was quite interesting. Thanks for the link tho, very kind of you If banks were TBTF a decade ago, they are MTBTF now....  (much, magnitudally or monsterously, take your pick)!

[Wombat + 1,028]

1 hour ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

Maybe not. Greffex uses an adenovirus model that can be genetically engineered at will: what they call "Plug and Play." 

They claim to have a vaccine for the Coronavirus. I suspect they do. 

The old way to build a vaccine was to use dead or attenuated virus particles--unaltered. This new technique uses an adenovirus "platform," plugging in certain genes to signal for an immune response to a particularly deadly antigen, and these things can be built in the lab within a few weeks. 

They still have to run some animal trials, but it shouldn't be long before it's ready. They did this on an National Institutes of Health grant so it's not some pie in the sky.  

I read in the local rag that researchers here in Australia using various methods, one of which is plug and play, but not sure if that the method used for new QLD Uni vaccine that was announced yesterday afternoon (after the closing bell unfortunately)

[Wombat + 1,028]

4 minutes ago, Wombat said:

I read in the local rag that researchers here in Australia using various methods, one of which is plug and play, but not sure if that the method used for new QLD Uni vaccine that was announced yesterday afternoon (after the closing bell unfortunately)

PS: Australia was first to replicate the virus so we had a head start but generally speaking, no European or American understands the quality of Australian science & technology (except the Pentagon). China is aware of the fact that we lead the pack in AI, quantum computing, radio-astronomy, some types of material science, and medical research. That is why 30% of our uni students are Chinese

[Wombat + 1,028]

Just now, Wombat said:

PS: Australia was first to replicate the virus so we had a head start but generally speaking, no European or American understands the quality of Australian science & technology (except the Pentagon). China is aware of the fact that we lead the pack in AI, quantum computing, radio-astronomy, some types of material science, and medical research. That is why 30% of our uni students are Chinese

PSS: An Aussie company called Biota made Relenza but the Yanks could not accept this so they bought it out and produced Tamiflu. I could site many other cases where no credit has been given, but most Americans don't even know that Australia developed the H-bomb!

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

20 hours ago, Wombat said:

Using solar and wind to create H2 MUST be profitable because Australia will be doing so soon. 20GW set-up on WA coast being built.

Hydrogen for use in chemical commodities is what my arguments were against. If you use it as an energy medium you don’t suffer too much. Now, 20k MW setup of what exactly? Is this rated capacity or actual output on average?

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

2 hours ago, Wombat said:

 I could site many other cases where no credit has been given, but most Americans don't even know that Australia developed the H-bomb!

You mean Teller is NOT the “father of the hydrogen bomb”? Time for some reading. 

Edit: no wait you didn’t say that, you said that Australia developed an h-bomb. I knew about this, but it shouldn’t even be hard to believe. 

Edited February 22, 2020 by KeyboardWarrior

[ronwagn + 6,290]

21 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Actually Ron, they are often small engines in these things these days! The electronics, fuel injection, engine mapping, super/turbocharging lets you really get a lot of power out of these smaller engines - it’s impressive if you are an old muscle car gearhead!

I got my wife a little A4 Audi a few years back, with the little 1.8 liter turbo. I only drive a car once a year, Chinese New Year from Kuala Lumpur to Johor Bahru (all highway). This little A4 goes like stink! I have the speeding ticket (caught on camera 😖) to prove it!

I did buy my granddaughter a three cylinder Mitsubishi Mirage. I was amazed how well it moved. I don't know how well it would do in mountains, but I guess well, because it is very light and has a continuous variable transmission. She basically just drives around town. 

[Wombat + 1,028]

2 hours ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

Hydrogen for use in chemical commodities is what my arguments were against. If you use it as an energy medium you don’t suffer too much. Now, 20k MW setup of what exactly? Is this rated capacity or actual output on average?

20GW of solar+wind. As I have mentioned on another post, we will also be supplying 20 of Singapore's electricity within 5 years via DC cable. Project details listed on "Sun Cable" web site.

[Wombat + 1,028]

1 minute ago, Wombat said:

20GW of solar+wind. As I have mentioned on another post, we will also be supplying 20 of Singapore's electricity within 5 years via DC cable. Project details listed on "Sun Cable" web site.

20% sorry! As for West Australian H2 plant, I guess that would be rated. Federal and State govt's backing H2 in a big way, not just for export market but domestic as well. They will be buying hydrogen powered car fleets before long.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

21 hours ago, Wombat said:

There is a tribe in India that don't squish ants. When they harvest their crops, they do not disturb the soil so that no microbes are hurt!

More power to them! I, on the other hand, will continue squishing ants, bashing cockroaches and swatting mosquitos to my hearts content. A simple yin and yang approach...😂

[Wombat + 1,028]

1 hour ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

You mean Teller is NOT the “father of the hydrogen bomb”? Time for some reading. 

Edit: no wait you didn’t say that, you said that Australia developed an h-bomb. I knew about this, but it shouldn’t even be hard to believe. 

Try googling "Sir Mark Oliphant". While you at it, search "Earnest Putley" (a not-too-distant relative of mine that helped develop radar). That is right, a British invention, not American. Helped turn the war in our favour more than anything else. Breaking the Enigma code was crucial too, also done by the British.

[Wombat + 1,028]

5 minutes ago, Wombat said:

Try googling "Sir Mark Oliphant". While you at it, search "Earnest Putley" (a not-too-distant relative of mine that helped develop radar). That is right, a British invention, not American. Helped turn the war in our favour more than anything else. Breaking the Enigma code was crucial too, also done by the British.

My mistake, I thought it was fission but actually the fusion bomb.

[Wombat + 1,028]

2 minutes ago, Wombat said:

My mistake, I thought it was fission but actually the fusion bomb.

It seems my spelling getting as bad as my history, I meant Ernest Just very tired after a very long week of trading.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

45 minutes ago, Wombat said:

Try googling "Sir Mark Oliphant". While you at it, search "Earnest Putley" (a not-too-distant relative of mine that helped develop radar). That is right, a British invention, not American. Helped turn the war in our favour more than anything else. Breaking the Enigma code was crucial too, also done by the British.

Okay, I get it! The Yanks came to the war late, didn’t contribute a damn thing, and rode the British and Russian coattails to glory....end of story (I am a poet and didn’t know it!😂).

That said, there are a few things that you should give the Yanks some credit for (you know, besides dying on foreign soil), such as the Lend-Lease Program, essentially going it alone in the Pacific until Germany was defeated (a major issue with Stalin and Churchill), and the design and fabrication of the P-51 Mustang fighter (the one with the Packard built Merlin engine and Packard developed sodium cooled valves which the British hand built job kept eating...)...giving the allies their only long distance escort fighter during the crucial years of the war...allowing daylight bombing to continue.

Just some thoughts...