FRED Blog — What’s behind the recent surge in the M1 money supply?

Because money is valued as a payment instrument, people are willing to hold a fraction of their wealth in money form for the sake of convenience, even though money earns relatively little interest and cash usually earns no interest at all.

If M1 carries the opportunity cost of not earning much interest, then why has the M1 money supply been increasing?

This increase is shown in the FRED graph above (red line), where we measure M1’s opportunity cost as the one-year U.S. Treasury yield (green line). In late February and early March of 2020, the Fed cut its policy interest rate dramatically to help ease credit conditions during the COVID-19 crisis. The resulting acceleration in the supply of M1 can be understood largely as banks accommodating an increase in people’s demand for money. However, the opportunity cost of money has remained more or less constant throughout 2020, over which time M1 growth has accelerated. What might account for this behavior?

To help answer this question, we’ll need to talk a bit about banking regulations…

FRED Blog
What’s behind the recent surge in the M1 money supply?
Suggested by David Andolfatto and Joel Steinberg.