>>>That's not quite correct. Britain and Russia were broke.
>>
>>Well the US technically is too, but the china express still pays the bills.
>
>Hey, without us where would they get rid of all that lead paint ? <g>

Just yesterday a thought crossed my mind (not that it's a rare event :), a what-if scenario. Goes like this: Someone else joins Spielberg in China-dissing. Someone actually important enough to tip the Chinese patience. They get sufficiently deurinated and in a fit of righteous rage sell about 1% of the Fed bonds they own. Would effect be similar to dropping a sliver of ice-9 into the ocean?

>>BTW, Russia, might have been broke, but that did not stop them from conquering half of europe on their own.
>
>But they depended heavily on the Murmansk run and Stalin really needed American and British airpower to keep Germany's industrial capacity under producing.

And they actually had the advantage of not really having to actually pay for their own production. They just had to make their people survive - there wasn't any need for any weapons manufacturer to make any money, it's all within the family (aka state), and profit wasn't anywhere on the horizon, and wasn't actually needed as motivation - Hitler gave them all the incentive they needed.

Any government can print money. Stalin could print tanks. Crazy vs mad, who wins, eh?