I will point out that I made a small fortune in an investment back in 2007 that was undertaken on the advice of a close friend and former client of mine. He made major changes in his real estate holdings and other investments in anticipation of the 2008 crash -- and it was based on two astute observations he made at the time:
1. The elimination of the Fed's reporting of the M3 money supply metric in 2006.
2. A couple of small, seemingly inconsequential news stories about a sudden surge in new real estate investment in modern Middle Eastern cities, driven by Islamic tribal leaders from Iraq and Afghanistan who were literally using bags of U.S. cash to finance the construction of new buildings in places like the UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar.
Notice the dramatic spike in commodity prices -- as priced in U.S. dollars -- that occurred right after this.
The long story short here is that nobody has any idea how much of the "cost" of those military campaigns was hidden by the inflation of the U.S. dollar to fund a massive bribery scheme using currency that wasn't reported anywhere.
“cost of those military campaigns”
In my youth, the Vietnam War was said to cost $100 billion.
Adjusted for inflation, that would be roughly $1.4 trillion.
For years, the USA had roughly 500,000 troops in Vietnam, far, far more than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, the figure of 50,000 coming to mind.