The Real Cost Of War: Three Times More Than The Government Admits

According to a new study by Brown University's Watson Institute, the real cost of the US wars since 9/11 is three times the Pentagon's estimate. Some $5.6 trillion have been spent on the endless global war. The total costs of 16 years of war are even higher, and they extend beyond just finance.




I wonder, too, how the Federal Reserve fits into this? At minute 20:14 of the above video Ron Paul states:

Ron Paul: "What would happen if these trillions of dollars would have been left in the hands of the people and would have then gone into higher wages and less inflation? Inflation comes because they borrow this money and print the money and who pays for that? The middle class and the poor because their standard of living goes down. So it’s intertwined. I started out in politics thinking a lot about monetary policy and economic policy. But as the years went on I came to the point where they are mixed in: foreign policy is very mixed in and all this military spending and this pretense that they’re separated from economic policy. There is one debate we had in the presidential race: they said “Tonight what we’re going to do is last week we talked about economic policy; tonight we’re going to talk about foreign policy. And I objected. You can’t talk about one without the other. How can you talk about foreign policy and not deal with the economic costs?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqzcPlf6K1A&t=20m14s
Similar in another recent video Ron Paul stated similar:





From the video directly above:

Ron Paul: "I think it’d be safe to say that the deep state won. They win on foreign policy so often and I think right now they again won on monetary policy. And the two go together. You could hardly find a taking on of the deep state on foreign policy but not on monetary policy. Cause you can’t have the foreign policy unless you have the Federal Reserve."

Chris Rosini: "Yes [Jerome] Powell was a member of the Carlyle Group. For those who have never heard of it, they are pure deep state. In fact they are a revolving door foreign policywise; they are big time war profiteers. So that’s where he’s coming from."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdarVe6NNo0&t=3m18s
Ron Paul: "And with the same people running the Federal Reserve, which is nothing more than a facilitator for raising taxes with the inflation tax as well as financing the welfare/warfare state."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdarVe6NNo0&t=6m34s
Ron Paul: "When you have control of the creation of money, and you get the appointments made from the deep state, you have to realize not only do they control the creation of money, they also control the distribution of money – good times and bad. When good times are rolling they keep the bubbles going; when bad times occur, they bail out their friend. It’s a terrible system; fiat money always fails. […] I consider the Federal Reserve as one of the most important issues not because of just the money issue but because the money issue and the creation of money is what finances big government. And it’s big government that causes war and causes people to suffer the consequences and causes us to lose our liberty. The best thing that could ever happen if we want to stop the mess we have would be to get rid of the withholding tax, don’t allow the government to borrow money, don’t allow government to print money, and send every person their bill in the country to pay every 30 days. […] Monetary policy is important because it engulfs everything else we do."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdarVe6NNo0&t=12m58s
I guess I never truly understood how the Federal Reserve finances the warfare state. When the Federal Reserve prints money, it decreases the value of all our dollars. So is Ron saying that the extra dollars that are printed are somehow being given to the MIC or the Pentagon without our (or Congress) knowing about it and without Congress allocating those amounts?