2013-05-14

Economics

In case one were wondering about the money supply....  There are claims that the money supply is under-reported.  Apparently there are several measures of the money supply, such as M1, M2, and M3.  Well, it turns out that the Federal Reserve stopped reporting M3 in 2006.  Indeed, the FRB website doesn't have such data available.  M3 includes the repurchase agreements that are what the government expands for "quantitative easing", and thus would be the number to look at to figure out the number of dollars, electronic or otherwise, that are available.  Supposedly, M3 is extraneous and can be calculated from other public data; but finding such information doesn't appear to be so easy.  One report projects that from 2007-2009 the money supply was in double-digit growth.