Cheap money has been around quite awhile and more so after 2001 when the IT bubble burst. People do not understand that technology advances are deflationary. After that US was in shit and started to play the game of property. Buy one property with no collateral and use that to buy the next one, buy cars with no interest payments, little or no downpayments. These are age old dirty tricks created to make you a permanent debt slave. In the meantime, corporations get to pump up their books to look pretty and pump the stockmarket prices. Oh, the wars? Well after you blow up a place flat, it needs to be rebuilt. And if you are the ruling invader there, you get to enslave that country into all kinds of debts. Why would Iraq need 170 M1s at 5 million USD a pop, which seem to get destroyed as easily as the T-72s?