World's Money Supply Hits Record $150 Trillion, US National Debt Passes $40 Trillion

The world has never held this much money. Global broad money supply reached $150 trillion in June 2026, up $10.7 trillion from a year earlier, a 7.7% annual growth rate, according to data reported by both Crypto Briefing and KuCoin.

Back in 2000, the entire global broad money stock was $26 trillion. In 25 years, the world has nearly sextupled it. The compound annual growth rate since then runs about 6.9%, meaning this isn't a blip. It's the trend line.

China is the single biggest holder, sitting on $52.6 trillion, or 35% of the global total. The US is a distant second at $23.2 trillion (15.4%), followed by the EU at $22.8 trillion (15.2%), Japan at $10.2 trillion (6.8%), and the UK at $5.2 trillion (3.4%). Advanced economies and emerging markets each account for roughly $75 trillion of the total, an almost even split.

Broad money is the widest lens economists use. It counts cash, checking accounts, savings deposits, and money market funds. The narrower M2 measure most Americans hear about was running $98 trillion to $120 trillion worldwide in mid-2026.

Growth peaked at 11.9% year-over-year in February 2026 before cooling to 7.7% by June. Part of that cooldown is an illusion. As the dollar depreciated against other currencies, foreign money supplies converted into dollars for comparison purposes got a mechanical boost, which distorts the headline percentage. Crypto Briefing and KuCoin both flagged a related concern: cash growth is now outrunning nominal GDP growth in a significant number of economies, meaning the money pile is growing faster than the actual output backing it.

Meanwhile, Washington's own debt problem is spiking bond yields

While the global money supply story was unfolding, American bond markets went through a rough stretch of their own. The 30-year US Treasury yield hit 5.34% on Tuesday, August 18, its highest level since before the 2008 financial crisis, according to CNN.

The US Treasury Department responded the next day, announcing it would at least double the amount of older, long-dated debt it regularly buys back from investors. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC the move was meant to signal that "we believe that the yields don't reflect the underlying fundamentals." Bessent also said there's been "a lot of misinformation" about the recent deficit growth, arguing it stems from the government having to issue tariff refunds after the Supreme Court ruled many of the Trump administration's tariffs were illegal.

Bessent's defense deserves a fair hearing. Bond buybacks have been a normal part of Treasury operations since the Biden administration, and if a chunk of the deficit spike really is a one-time tariff-refund bill rather than new structural overspending, that's a materially different story than Washington simply spending itself into a hole. That's his stated position, and CNN reports it as such. It hasn't been independently verified in these sources one way or the other.

Markets bought the signal for about a day. Yields dropped and stocks rallied on Wednesday. By Thursday, August 20, yields were creeping back toward pre-announcement levels: the 30-year sat near 5.2% and the 10-year, which drives mortgage and auto loan rates, was near 4.7%, according to CNN.

Krishna Guha of Evercore ISI put it plainly in a client note cited by CNN: "If the administration could engineer a material change in fundamentals via a smaller deficit this would be a game-changer." Buybacks can smooth out short-term volatility. They can't make the deficit smaller.

And the deficit is the real problem. The federal budget deficit is running at roughly 6% of GDP, a level the US has historically only seen during wars or deep recessions, according to CNN. The national debt crossed $40 trillion in August, quadrupling since 2008.

Bond investors aren't being subtle about what they want: more yield to keep lending to a government that keeps spending more than it takes in. No amount of Treasury market maneuvering changes that math.

Two separate data sets, two separate stories, but they land on the same conclusion from a common-sense standpoint. The world's central banks and governments have spent a quarter century expanding the money supply and, in America's case, piling on debt, and the bill is starting to show up in the price of borrowing itself. The open question going into September: whether Washington cuts the deficit, or whether the bond market keeps forcing the issue one yield spike at a time.