The US money supply just hit an all-time high, but the growth rate is close to normal, so this looks less alarming than the headlines suggest.

• The M2 money supply has grown every month for over two years and is now above $23 trillion, up more than $800 billion this year alone.
• The long-term chart looks terrifying because it curves straight up, but that is just what compounding looks like — even the gold supply, growing a steady 2% a year, makes the same shape.
• In percentage terms money is growing about 6% a year, which is lower than in the late 1990s, the 2000s before money printing began, and even the 1800s under a gold standard.
• The real warning sign is when money grows much faster than the economy, as it did in 2020 and 2021 — right now the two are running neck and neck.
• Gold and Bitcoin are still climbing hard, but that rise is not being driven by fresh money printing on the scale of the pandemic years.

Outlook: Barring another burst of emergency money printing, this points to ordinary inflation rather than an Argentina- or Turkey-style spiral.