Money-Supply Growth Fell to an 8-year Low in March

The supply of US dollars has slowed during early 2017 with March’s year-over-year percentage increase hitting a 103-month low of 5.9 percent. The last time the year-over-year growth rate was lower was during September of 2008, when the growth rate was 5.2 percent. Monthly year-over-year growth rates in the money supply have been falling each month since October. (All the numbers used here were posted in mid-April 2017.)
Over the past eight months or so, money supply growth rates have become somewhat volatile with the growth rate surging from 6.7 percent in late 2015 up to 11.3 percent by late 2016, and down again to March’s multi-year low.
The M2 measure also showed a downward turn in recent months, although not to the same extent as the “Austrian” measure. The year-over-year change in M2 during March was 6.3 percent which put M2 growth near a 12-month low. M2 movements were otherwise unremarkable, however.

This post was published at Ludwig von Mises Institute on May 12, 2017.