[Alberta's Child]

The first evidence of this administration's incompetence during the post-invasion period came not when Rumsfeld was fired after the 2006 election, but in the spring of that year when the Federal government stopped reporting one of the three major measures (M3) of the nation's money supply.

To me, that was a clear indication that the military campaign and post-invasion occupation of Iraq was, in fact, costing this country far more than anyone in Washington was willing to admit, and was an ominous warning about what was certain to become a massive increase in monetary inflation in this country. Some astute Freeper(s) have pointed out that the real rate of monetary inflation in this country is now somewhere on the order of 18% -- which makes the "official" inflation data published by the Federal government downright comical.

[El Gato]

To me, that was a clear indication that the military campaign and post-invasion occupation of Iraq was, in fact, costing this country far more than anyone in Washington was willing to admit, and was an ominous warning about what was certain to become a massive increase in monetary inflation in this country. Some astute Freeper(s) have pointed out that the real rate of monetary inflation in this country is now somewhere on the order of 18% -- which makes the "official" inflation data published by the Federal government downright comical.

You're going to have to look elsewhere for the cause of that. Although it surely contributed, spending on the war, and the whole DoD budget is a still only a small part of the total federal spending bill. Hint: Entitlements. In FY 2001, the last Clinton budget, Defense spending was 2.9% of GDP, while entitlements were 10.9%. By FY2006, defense had skyrocketed up to 3.1%, while entitlements had oozed up to 11.9%. The *increase* in entitlements spending was more than the total FY 2006 DoD budget, less the war on terror spending. Add that in, and the numbers are close, the increase in entitlements is about the same as total military spending.

From the Heritage foundation, April 2007:

The U.S. government is running a large bud­get deficit, and the principal reason is the growth in entitlement costs, not increased defense funding since 9/11. Since 1970, the historical ratio between defense spending and entitlement spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security has flipped. In 1970, military spending totaled 7.8 percent of GDP—almost twice the 4.1 percent of GDP spent on the big three entitlement programs. Today, defense spending has fallen to 3.9 percent of GDP while entitlement spending has more than doubled to 8.8 per­cent of GDP.

(Numbers don't quite agree because they include different, things. The 8.8% of GDP is presumably only for those Big Three programs, while the numbers from FY2001 and FY2006 include all entitlements.)

Another source of the inflation, which is about to get even worse, is the various "bailouts" of the real estate/mortgage companies, which the Fed and the Administration attempted to solve by throwing money at them.