Discontinued
The Federal Reserve is doing some interesting things. The M1 and M2 money supply charts will no longer be updated and “the Fed’s payment system that allows banks to send money back and forth went down for several hours,” on Wednesday (Feb 24).
The Federal Reserve’s M1 and M2 money supply charts are used as the standard for estimating the amount of dollars (Federal Reserve Notes) in the world.
When going to https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2, the link says, “This series will no longer be updated. More information is available in the notes below the graph. This series is the suggested substitute: M2SL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL.” Ditto for M1."[1]
At the bottom of the graphs it reads, “This weekly series is discontinued and will no longer be updated. The non-seasonally adjusted version of this weekly series is WM2NS, and the seasonally adjusted monthly series is M2SL.” The update went into affect on Tuesday the 23rd.
Perhaps the Fed wants to use the M2SL money supply chart because it is averaged (manipulated) and only updated monthly, as opposed to weekly with M2.
Additionally, several of the Fed’s payments systems went down. According to Jeff Cox, writing for CNBC,[2]
“The list of services impacted: Account Services, Central Bank, Check 21, Check Adjustments, FedACH, FedCash, FedLine Advantage, FedLine Command, FedLine Direct, FedLine Web, Fedwire Funds, Fedwire Securities and National Settlement.
[…]
Outages, particularly with the ACH system, can have wide-ranging impacts. The system handles direct deposits of payroll, Social Security and income tax refunds as well as auto payments for mortgages and utility bills.
FedCash distributes currency and coins, which have been in tight supply since the Covid-19 pandemic took hold. FedWire is a settlements service, while FedLine provides alternative services to the ACH sytem.”
Is the inflated money supply causing problems for the Fed?