M3

I've been hearing about the M3 the past few days and its dissapearance from the public view by the Fed. I had no idea what the M3 is, but apparently it's the anniversary of the day they(the federal reserve) decided to save 1.5 million dollars by calling to a halt public disclosure of it. I think I read $1.5m would be the equivalent of less than .065 % of the annual income of the Fed so that seems a bit of a story.
Anyway, if you should stumble upon this story here is the M3 explanation from Fund My Mutual Fund.....

First what is M3?

So what is M3? To understand what M3 is one needs to know what M1 and M2 are as well.

M1 - Money supply that includes all coins, currency held by the public, traveler's checks, checking account balances, NOW accounts, automatic transfer service accounts, and balances in credit unions.

M2 - Money supply that includes M1, plus savings and small time deposits of depository institutions, overnight repos at commercial banks, and retail mutual fund money market accounts.

M3 - Money supply that includes M2, plus large time deposits, repos of maturity greater than one day at commercial banks, institutional money market accounts and Eurodollar deposits of US banks held at foreign branches and at all offices in the UK and Canada.

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More interesting - why is M3 suddenly gone?

Some of the reasons we have seen floated around are as follows:
History has shown that only failing economies e.g. Soviet Union keep data secret (Financial Sense - Toni Straka - Unpleasant M3 Trend, November 12, 2005). An interesting premise and a theme we saw woven amongst a number of writers is that they have something to hide. The claim is that the Fed should be transparent and by not publishing the number the Fed now lacks transparency.
The end of publishing of M3 in March 2006 coincides with the start of the Iranian Oil Bourse. The premise here is that the with the oil bourse trading in Euros there will be a rush out of US$ into Euros and that M3 could drop sharply. A sharp drop in M3 would of course presage a recession as falling M3 is a characteristic of weak economic periods.
M3 is a measure of inflation in the economy. A somewhat unproven rule of thumb is GDP + inflation = M3. Will be able to properly measure inflation going forward if we don't know what M3 really is.
We are about to enter a period of hyperinflation and by eliminating M3 we will not know how much liquidity the Fed is pumping into the system. Remember the Fed doesn't really print money it is the banking system that expands money supply. But the Fed influences it through open market operations. We will have to watch daily Fed repo action very carefully irrespective of whether they are going to publish Repos (RPs) as noted in the bulletin above. The Fed doing repos puts money into the system and the Fed doing reverse repos takes money out of the system. Of course as well this is the exact opposite of the collapse in M3 premised with the oil bourse above.
Further on the theme above a period of hyperinflation would occur as the Fed tries to save us from a collapsing housing market and softer consumer demand. The Fed adds more and more liquidity to the system to stave off a sharp economic decline. By not publishing Repos (RPs) as noticed in their bulletin above the Fed again is hiding what they do on a day to day basis. This will make it difficult for both currency traders and equity traders to know what the Fed is up to.
The conclusion is that the Federal Reserve will be hiding a debasement of the US$.

Just thought I'd share!