FX.co ★ Washington approves bottomless military budget

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Pentagon published financial statements. The reports read that U.S. spy agencies spent nearly $68 billion on the national intelligence programs and allowances of servicemen in fiscal year 2014. Total spending for fiscal year 2013 was also about $68 billion. Funding for the country's 17 intelligence agencies reached a peak of about $80 billion in 2011. As for 2014, the Congress allocated the bulk of the budget ($50.5 billion) to the Central Intelligence Agency while the military intelligence program received $17.4 billion. Washington declined to provide a breakdown of the intelligence budget or any further details about how the money was spent. According to experts’ estimates, the U.S. military has spent $424 million in its military campaign against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, however a part of expenses was covered by allies. Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon's press secretary, acknowledged this information. He said the cost has averaged about $7.6 million a day since the bombing began in Iraq on August, 8. Kirby used to assert that confrontation with Islamic extremists does not exceed $7-10 million a day. In fact, the airstrikes in Syria and Iraq as part of the counter-IGIL campaign cost the U.S. about $7.5 million a day. However, there are different estimates. Gordon Adams, a professor of international relations at American University and expert on defense spending, thinks that a realistic guestimate of the cost of an aggressive campaign against ISIS will range from $10 billion to $15 billion in fiscal year 2015. He based this partly on the cost of previous U.S. operations in the Middle East.