Fed to Discontinue M3

Yes, the Fed will be discontinuing M3 but some will be able to reconstruct the number since the components of M3 will still be published although spread amongst different places. The bottom line being that the number will not be readily available to the masses.

Robert McHugh, Ph.D. at:
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/mchugh/2006/0311.html

in the context of the Fed wanting banks to restrict commercial real estate loans (a good read) writes:

"The Fed announced again on March 9th, with no palatable explanation, that they will no longer publish M-3 as of March 23rd. While they claim that M-3 is useless, in the blurb on their website, the fact is banks are still reporting all the data on their Call Reports used to calculate M-3. The Fed has not eliminated the unique M-3 components from the Bank Call Reports.

Why don’t they want to be transparent with the most important statistic, the very measure of why they were established by a minority of Congress during a late night session back in 1913? Because they cannot wait to pump money to high heaven like some sort of fiat tower of Babel.

M-3 was increased by $28.3 billion last week, a 14.2 percent annualized rate of growth. Over the past 2 weeks, M-3 was boosted an amazing $81.9 billion, for an annualized rate of growth of 20.7 percent! Over the past 8 weeks, M-3 is up 129.6 billion, an 8.2 percent rate of growth, and is up a whopping $249.7 billion over the past 12 weeks, a 10.7 percent annualized rate of growth, a $1.0 trillion annual expansion."