>"Why do you think they just stopped releasing the M3 numbers, making it literally impossible for us to know how much the currency has been inflated?"<
-I'm not aware of this- can you give me a link to this info? Thanks
It was given broad, but shallow coverage during that timeframe. Here's a semi-random link I just googled up (it's an interview with Ron Paul on the subject of the demise of the M3):
ONE CONGRESSMAN'S FIGHT TO SAVE M3
Here's one snippet I grabbed out of it that reinforces what I said in my earlier post:
That's just the tip of the iceberg -- it's a very good article, I recommend reading it in its entirety. Ron Paul pulls no punches.
[T]here's always a deliberate attempt to deflect concern about the money supply so that the common person thinks that inflation is caused by other things.
Here's one more teaser from the article:
OK, I cannot resist. ONE more snippet from the article:
What about your colleagues in Congress? Is anyone else asking questions about M3?
Other members of Congress have no interest in it; there's very little interest in monetary policy. I couldn't get anyone to pay much attention to it. In fact, there are a lot of misconceptions. For example, one day I was talking to Greenspan, and one of the members in Congress came up and asked, "Isn't the dollar backed by gold?" This was a member of Congress! That's when I realized we have a lot of work to do.
After you read that article, you will not only know that yes, they really did cut off the M3 reporting, but you will also have a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach as you realize that -- as one of the comments after the article put it -- "we are headed down the German road of the twenties!" The pathetically lame excuse they gave for cutting off the reporting -- to save money! -- make a mockery of the entire situation. It's as if the captain of the Titanic ordered his First Mate to stop directing passengers to the lifeboats, so that he'd be able to replace the washer in the faucet in the bathroom sink because it's dripping water.
What should eventually happen is that the Fed shouldn't be able to buy Treasury bills. The Fed should never be able to finance government spending by buying Treasury bills with credit they create out of thin air. That's the high powered money, but when that gets into the banking system you then have the fractional-reserve-banking principle that allows that to expand that credit by six or seven fold. You expand money supply that way, and that's how M3 expands.
This outfit prints up money out of thin air at the drop of a hat, yet, they can't afford the trivial cost of reporting the total amounts? LOL!
Tighten your seatbelt, we are headed down a very bumpy road!