"Printing money" is not one thing. It usually means one of three measures, and they can point in different directions at the same time. This page reads each of them off the published data and says plainly which are rising.
Over the last six months all three measures — Fed balance sheet, Net liquidity, M2 money supply — are rising. In the colloquial sense, the answer right now is yes on all three readings.
On all three measures, yes · 2026-07-23
The three measures
Fed balance sheet
$6.75TRising
The literal channel. Rising means the Fed is adding assets and creating reserves; falling means runoff.
6-month change
+$0.16T
Year over year
+1.3%
Net liquidity
$5.87TRising
Fed assets minus the Treasury's cash account minus ON RRP — the part that actually reaches the banking system.
6-month change
+$0.17T
Year over year
−4.3%
M2 money supply
$23.06TRising
Broad money held by the public. Mostly created by commercial bank lending, not by the Fed directly.
6-month change
+$0.70T
Year over year
+5.6%
Why the three can disagree
The Fed creates reserves; banks create deposits. Those are different acts, and only the first is anything like "printing." M2 can grow briskly while the Fed's balance sheet shrinks, because bank lending is expanding deposits faster than runoff is destroying reserves — that is roughly what a normal expansion looks like.
Net liquidity is the one that most often diverges from the headline. The Fed can be adding nothing at all while net liquidity rises, simply because the Treasury is spending down its account at the Fed or the ON RRP balance is falling. Cash moves into the banking system either way, but no one printed it — it was already there, parked.
What "money printing" would actually look like
Large-scale asset purchases show up unmistakably: the balance sheet turns up steeply and reserves rise with it, week after week, without a matching fall in the Treasury's cash balance. That is what 2020 looked like — several trillion in under a year.
What is far more common is a slow drift: reserve-management purchases that keep the balance sheet roughly flat in nominal terms while the economy grows around it. That is maintenance, not stimulus, and reading it as the latter is the single most common error in this area.
The measure worth watching instead
If the underlying question is "will this support asset prices", none of the three is the right gauge on its own. What matters is whether the cash available to the banking system is growing faster than the demand for it — which is why this site scores the flow of net liquidity and then checks it against short-term funding rates rather than ranking any single balance-sheet level.
When funding markets are calm and net liquidity is rising, the backdrop is supportive regardless of what the balance sheet alone is doing. When SOFR persistently exceeds the rate the Fed pays on reserves, it is not supportive no matter how large the balance sheet is.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Fed printing money right now?
It depends which measure you mean. This page shows the current 6-month direction of the Fed's balance sheet, net liquidity and M2 side by side, each taken from the published series. When all three are rising, the colloquial answer is yes; when they disagree, the honest answer is that some measures are expanding and others are not.
Does the Fed literally print money?
No. Physical currency is printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing on the Fed's order, and it is a small, demand-driven share of the money stock. What the Fed creates when it buys assets is bank reserves — an electronic liability on its own balance sheet, not banknotes.
Why does M2 grow when the Fed is not buying anything?
Because most money in circulation is created by commercial banks when they lend. A new loan creates a matching deposit, and that deposit counts in M2. The Fed influences how expensive that is, but it does not have to buy a single bond for M2 to grow.
Is rising net liquidity the same as money printing?
No. Net liquidity can rise purely because the Treasury spends down its account at the Fed or because money funds move cash out of the ON RRP facility. In both cases existing cash moves into the banking system; nothing new was created. The effect on markets can still be real, which is why the flow is worth tracking separately from the balance sheet.
Does money printing cause inflation?
Not mechanically. Reserves created by asset purchases sit on bank balance sheets and do not become spending unless credit and demand follow. The 2009-2019 period saw a large balance-sheet expansion with persistently below-target inflation; 2021-2022 combined balance-sheet expansion with direct fiscal transfers and supply constraints, which is a materially different setup.