U.S. inflation roller coaster prompts fresh look at long-ignored money supply
JANUARY 26, 2023 BY MICHAEL S. DERBY FOR REUTERS
NEW YORK – The amount of money sloshing around the U.S. economy shrank last year for the first time on record, a development that some economists believe bolsters the case for U.S. inflation pressures continuing to abate.
The Federal Reserve’s main measure of the nation’s money stock – known as M2 money supply – slid for a fifth straight month in December, dropping by a record $147.4 billion to a seasonally adjusted $21.2 trillion from the month before, data from the U.S. central bank released this week showed.
A paper published this month by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University said that economists and policymakers would do well to keep an eye on money supply measures in the future.
“Money has all but disappeared from monetary policy analysis,” given the economics profession’s emphasis on the view monetary policy works by managing expectations about the future path of interest rates, wrote Joshua Hendrickson of the University of Mississippi. Given money supply’s better-than-expected track record on recent inflation issues, ignoring these numbers has been “misguided,” he said.
Joshua Hendrickson
Joshua Hendrickson is an associate professor and chair of the University of Mississippi Department of Economics.
His research interests are at the intersection of monetary economics, public finance, political economy, and historical economic development. Within monetary economics, he studies everything from historical monetary institutions to modern monetary policy to Bitcoin. Within political economy, he has used the tools of economics to understand revolutions, the decision to go to war, and how the national defense motive shapes the state and its policies and institutions. Finally, he examines the role of institutions in shaping the progress or regress of the state and the economy.