Is there an easy way to track the current supply of money and money printing?

[Rael]

What I am wondering is, is there a statistic or something I can easily refer to and track, like the way you might track a stock, that will tell me, "the US money supply yesterday was X amount of dollars" and "today the Fed printed X amount of dollars bringing the total money supply to X"?

 

[DamianTV]

Take a look at shadowstats.org

Other than the now defunct M3, no, and since the inception of the Federal Reserve, there is no easy way to figure it out, due to the nature of money. To put it simply, one would have to track how much new currency was generated from new loans, and how much currency was destroyed, less debt from interest, by making payments on loans. But thats also way way way over simplifying the entire complex behemoth of the money creation process.

 

[Fight-n-Mad]

The Fed publishes all kinds of statistics and charts. But, yeah, it takes a good bit of study to decipher it all.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/

 

[Sola_Fide]

The best way to find out would be to audit the FED.

 

[Zippyjuan]

There are many measures of the supply of money but M2 is the most commonly used. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2?cid=29

 

[euphemia]

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing publishes a report each month which tells how many and what denominations of currency were printed that month. A reader would have to do the math on how the bills add up.

I'm not sure there is a report published on how many bills are in circulation at a given time. I don't think it could be accurately determined. Some were considered collection worthy and are out of circulation for that reason. Some bills are defaced or otherwise considered not up to circulation standards and are sent to the FRB to be shredded. Of those, some are put back into circulation, so I'm not sure if there is a way to accurately assess the current money supply.

There are people who track US currency as a hobby over on www.wheresgeorge.com. That is probably the biggest pool of amateur money tracking statistics available. One of the users there posts a very nice analysis in the forums of the BEP Reports as they come out.

I probably didn't answer your question very well, but there you go.

 

[escapinggreatly]

Yeah, the best source for tracking the Fed's printing is probably the Fed itself. Use the M0, M1, and M2 series to follow different tabulations of the money currently sloshing around in the economy.

 

[Zippyjuan]

Bills in circulation is only a tiny fraction of all the money out in the system. New bills are also printed to replace old ones which got lost or destroyed or worn out (banks send worn notes to the Treasury who destroys and replaces them).

One measure of how much money is put into the system is the monetary base- but that is only part of the story. You also need to know how quickly that money circulates through the system. During the economic crisis, the Fed significantly increased the monetary base, but the money circulating (as measured by M2) did not dramatically go up. Why? Becasue the money was not moving quickly through the economy as it normally would have been expected to. This is known as "velocity" of money. The base can tell you what is "potentially" out there, but does not show what is going on now. If the base stays the same, the money circulating can still go up or down- depending on if people are buying more or fewer goods and services. Right now, that spending rate is pretty low and that is why the M2 has not increased like the base has. Most of that money they "created" is sitting at the Fed in the form of excess bank reserves.

I think that just following M2 should give you the information you are seeking.

 

[euphemia]

Most of that money they "created" is sitting at the Fed in the form of excess bank reserves.

And sometimes it sits in bank vaults where the "stock" is not rotated properly. That would explain why hobbyists are receiving uncirculated series 2003 bricks (sealed packages of 1000 bills) and straps (100 bills) of $1s from their local branches.