Chapter 664: German-Soviet War (21)

"Brother Yannick, please help me persuade my mother. I also want to go to space."

Yannick shook his head. "Little Elizabeth, space is really dangerous. I'm not kidding. You should really listen to your mother and stay on Earth."

Little Elizabeth pouted in dissatisfaction. "If others can go up, why can't I?"

Yannick showed a serious expression. "They set out with the great spirit of sacrificing for mankind. Can you? You just think it's fun."

"I don't care! I want to go to space! I want to go to space!!" Looking at little Elizabeth who was about to roll on the ground and make a fuss, Yannick laughed dumbly. "Okay, let's go. But not everyone can go to space. You have to meet the conditions."

Little Elizabeth stood at attention and held her chest high, with a face full of confidence. "No matter what the conditions are, I will meet them!"

"Oh? Then listen carefully." Yannick took the paper and pen and said as he wrote. "First, you must master relevant professional knowledge in mechanics, biology, physics, electronics, medicine, mathematics, etc., and obtain a master's degree or above."

"Have more than 1,000 hours of flying experience, a diving certificate, and more than 500 hours of survival training."

"You need to have good physical and mental qualities."

"You must be proficient in German. All instrument instructions and manuals are in German, but there is no English for your reference."

Little Elizabeth listened blankly to Yannick's enumeration of the conditions required to become an astronaut, and it took her a long time to recover. "So complicated?"

Yannick tore off the paper and shook it in front of her. "It's so complicated, otherwise do you think anyone can go up? How about it, are you going to give up? You should practice golf, skiing, horseback riding, etc."

"I will pass it!" Little Elizabeth shouted, snatched the paper from Yannick's hand, and ran out.

The next morning, fifty ME-264d high-altitude bombers took off from the Greenland airport and flew to the United States.

Five bombers returned due to malfunctions halfway through the flight, and the remaining 45 bombers entered the US airspace after a long flight. Soon, a group of fighters came up, but unfortunately they still could not climb to the flight altitude of the bomber group, and could only follow them a few thousand meters below them.

"Tsk tsk, look at these poor guys." A bombardier on a ME-264d bomber looked at the US fighters a few thousand meters below and couldn't help but mock them. "These idiots might as well stay on the ground. Flying up is a waste of fuel."

In fact, the American fighter pilots didn't want to "humiliate themselves" like this, but they had to do it, because without their fighters accompanying them to deter, the German bombers would unscrupulously lower their altitude and bomb accurately. With them, the German bombers would not be accurate even if they dropped bombs.

"Maybe we should install belly machine guns, maybe we can still shoot down a few fighter planes." As mentioned above, in order to pursue the ultimate high-altitude flight performance, this bomber not only uses a large amount of chromium-nickel-manganese super-hard aluminum alloy, but also cancels all self-defense weapons, not even equipped with a machine gun or a turret.

At this moment, the US fighters can't reach them, and they can't attack these US fighters. The two sides can only stare at each other from a distance of several thousand meters.

President Wilkie, who was holding a meeting in the White House office, received an alarm about the invasion of German bombers and hurried down to the bunker with everyone to hide. In fact, they had guessed that the German bombers might still carry the same carbon fiber silk bombs as last time, and there was no direct lethality; but no one dared to guarantee it 100%, so they hid in the bunker just in case.

"These damn Germans are really punctual!"

Now the United States is making every effort to develop in all aspects of the military. The navy has to build warships, the army has to build tanks and aircraft, and even through the Lend-Lease Act, a large number of materials have to be transported to the Soviet Union, and a large amount of pensions have to be paid; all this has caused the US finances to fall into a precarious situation.

If the Germans are given gold again, the United States may go bankrupt. Therefore, after discussion, everyone decided to adopt General Arnold's method, hoping to reduce some losses.

Listening to the crying of the newly appointed Secretary of the Treasury, President Wilkie frowned deeply. "It seems that we have to find a way to increase fiscal revenue."

There are several main types of national fiscal revenue: taxes, profits of state-owned enterprises, issuance of treasury bonds, and other income from leasing of state-owned resources. Among them, taxes account for the largest proportion of total fiscal revenue, and President Wilkie naturally thought of taxes. "How about increasing taxes?"

However, this proposal was opposed by a staff member. When President Roosevelt came to power, his greatest contribution was to pull the United States out of the economic crisis, which included a tax reduction policy; and now President Wilkie is raising taxes just over a month after taking office, which may cause public resentment.

Another staff member said. "Then we can issue war bonds again." Why "again"? Because President Roosevelt had already issued war bonds once when he declared war on Germany.

President Wilkie nodded. "War bonds are indeed a good idea. Now that we are facing an emergency of life and death in the United States, anyone with a little bit of wisdom will actively buy bonds."

Everyone agreed to continue issuing war bonds and began to discuss the number and denomination of issuance. After discussing for a while, everyone felt that it would be quite convenient to directly apply the bond model issued during President Roosevelt's time.

The war bonds issued during the Roosevelt presidency were almost the same as the original national defense bonds, which were divided into book-entry and paper bonds. In order to ensure proper circulation, bearer paper bonds were used as the main form, and the face value of the bonds was 25, 50, 100, 200, etc.

Moreover, this type of bond has interest. Individuals only need to pay 75 US dollars to buy a 25 US dollar bond, and the government will redeem it for the full 25 US dollars after 10 years. In this way, the annual interest rate is 3.33%. Anyone with a little economic common sense can see that this interest rate is not very high. If inflation breaks out within this decade, it will just break even.

At that time, Roosevelt issued 2 billion US dollars in bonds; and 2 billion US dollars is just a drop in the bucket for the current US fiscal situation. President Wilkie waved his hand and set an amount. "First issue 8 billion US dollars. If sales are good, it can be oversold to 10 billion US dollars."

An aide said with some concern. "Mr. President, is it too much?" Eight billion US dollars is definitely not a small amount. Last year's US GDP was only 101.4 billion US dollars, and this eight billion US dollars is equivalent to one twelfth of last year's GDP.