The U.S. money supply has contracted for the first time since the Federal Reserve started publishing the data in January 1960.
According to the latest data presented by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the M2 money-supply growth rate tumbled by 1.3 percent year-over-year in December 2022, down from 0.01 percent in November 2022. This is also sharply down from the February 2021 peak of nearly 27 percent.
In total, the national money supply stands at more than $21.2 trillion, which is still more than 37 percent above the pre-pandemic level of about $15.458 trillion.
M2 is a measurement of the U.S. money stock that includes cash, checkable deposits, traveler’s checks, small-denomination time deposits, shares in retail money market mutual funds, and other categories of deposits that can easily be converted to cash….