Investment bank:

Underwriting stock and bond offerings to corporations. (meaning hiring the lawyers to write the lawyer stuff, and hawking the products)
Mergers and Acquisitions.
Market makers for bonds.
Currency trading for speculation which goes along with bond trading (as FX rates highly depend on interest rate changes).
Lending large amounts to corporations and governments.
Sponsoring investment funds.
Lending money to hedge funds, and supposedly margin calling them before they blow up.
Direct bidding on government debt auctions.

What commercial banks typically handle:

Personal and smaller corporate cash management & payroll.
Real estate mortgages
Consumer lending
FX exchange for actual foreign cash transactions

What investment and commercial banks handle:
Institutional real estate lending

The largest bank is JP Morgan Chase. JP Morgan is the investment banking side, and Chase is the commercial banking side.

> This is what happens when ownership and control are separated.

Until the 1990's, large investment banks were usually partnerships personally owned by the top executives and retired ones, sometimes with unlimited personal liability. And from 1933 to then, they did not blow up, and neither did the commercial banks, until 1980's deregulation.

> What's interesting is that if you say "That's wrong" it will almost always correct itself and answer with the right information.

What happens when you say "that's wrong" when it presents correct information?

> while "intelligence" is one of those things that if you ask a half dozen experts to define, you'll get around a dozen answers.

That's why the 'IQ' tests are measuring 'g' factor which the experts understand has one answer, and it's an important one.

> Since the US has long dismantled most of it's manufacturing base, there will be no more demand for the US dollar, and it will lose the position of the world's reserve currency.

The problem in the original article is that the US dollar is too strong (not weak), meaning there is too much demand for dollars for investing in bonds, and that makes it harder for their own economies.

The reason for the dollar dominance is the relative stability and regulation of the dollar based financial system, not manufacturing, not petroleum. If the BRICS decide to make their own currency, what is the trust in the institutions where investors will use that currency? Do you trust to get your money back for sure out of an Indian bank, a Brazilian bank, much less a Chinese or Russian bank?

No, the US dollar, UK pound, EU euro and Swiss franc are reserve currencies because their banks are regulated for the benefit of financial investors, and other than money laundering, there isn't a significant chance of political confiscation.

Why is petroleum priced in dollars? Because the Saudis and UAE want to invest their revenue in dollars more than any other currency. It's not a choice by the buyers but the sellers.

what's the complexity of the fuel targets here? I haven't heard about this.

DT hasn't been commonly used in fusion systems now because they aren't built to withstand the radiation unlike a hypothetical reactor. DT is necessary for energy gain at current confinement now.

When a magnetic confinement fusion system goes net positive, the power will be far higher than this NIF experiment and total energy released much higher. I would bet on Commonwealth Fusion as closest.

The NIF system is a nuclear weapons simulation project, not any practical power producing reactor, or even a prototype for one.

Scientists have genetically engineered the world's smallest moving organism.

It's bailing out PG&E, which is definitely not popular in California.

The right outcome is to expropriate the plant for $1 (as PG&E wants to shut it down anyway, how can they complain), take ownership and keep it running at cost.

There already is inter-bank settlement. In US it's FedWire and ACH.

It could even be a symbolic proxy beating of Garry Kasparov who is vehemently and publicly anti-Putin.

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/30...

> Aerojet Rocketdyne had access to the RD-180 and blueprints and manufacturing information for decades, and they havenâ(TM)t been able to build an equivalent engine.

I suspect that the issue there isn't inability (given Rocketdyne's long history of engine manufacturing) but cost---cheaper then to buy from Russia.

They saw the same objects simultaneously on two cameras separated by some distance. That makes many explanations implausible.

| for reasons beyond me, they interpret more credit accounts and debt as a sign of responsibility and ability to manage credit;

The reasons are

(1) the banks that issue the card do more underwriting, like knowledge of income, debt and assets, so that the fact that someone has more than one credit line open in good standing has positive correlation to low credit losses. There is no record of rejected credit applications, only the absence of credit lines.

(2) more credit accounts open for longer, and still in good standing, is hard evidence of responsibility and ability to manage credit.

The banks care about this one question: "If I extend credit to Joe Q Public, what's the chance there will be a major default on his account?" The fact that others have previously done so, and have not suffered losses, is evidence it may continue to be true.

| They clearly get something.

They get complete blackmail material for all of generation Z, for when they grow up to have positions of importance and authority.

They will be able to shape future elections, and force involuntary espionage, by releasing the embarassing likes, video views, and comments of everyone.