US Money Supply Hits Record $23 Trillion as Critics See a New Fed-Fueled Bubble

The U.S. money supply climbed to $23.05 trillion in May, the first time the Federal Reserve’s M2 gauge has ever crossed the $23 trillion mark. The record lands as critics have accused the Fed of quietly restarting stimulus.

The gauge has now risen every month this year, climbing from $22,429.3 billion in January, an expansion of roughly $623 billion in four months. For scale, that four-month increase alone approaches the annual economic output of a mid-sized European country.

The milestone has sharpened a debate about what the growth means, given that the Mises Institute (an Austrian-economics think tank and longtime Fed critic) recently wrote that money-supply growth in 2026 has risen to a multi-year high as the central bank “pumps new QE,” a reference to quantitative easing (QE), which is the practice of expanding the Fed’s balance sheet by purchasing securities.

The Fed itself publishes the figures without commentary, and mainstream economists note that money supply normally grows alongside the economy. M2 spent 2022 and 2023 contracting, the sharpest decline since the Great Depression era, before resuming growth. Consequently, part of the current climb represents a return to trend rather than pure stimulus. The pace of that climb, however, is what has hard-money advocates on alert.

The next H.6 release, covering June, is set to arrive in late July and will show whether the streak of monthly increases extends to six. Markets are also watching the Fed’s policy path, as softer U.S. labor data has strengthened bets on easier policy into the fall, which would likely accelerate money growth further.