It's not the money supply. It's a supply side problem due to Corona shutdowns. All the Fed is about to do is induce a bunch of unemployment.
However, I should note that if it were up to me, I would accept inflation to save lives every single time. Without that relief, people would have died, starved, or gone into life-ruining debt. Inflation is unfortunate, but better than the alternative.
The way inflation is being used here is not what it has traditionally meant. Inflation, ie, too much total liquid cash, accompanied by super high prices for labor (and therefore goods) started secretly and dramatically a very long time ago. It's debated if it's the 60s, or some people say as far back as pre or post great depression. That runaway inflation is an old story and has become the norm.
The current definition of inflation is "whether the working class has enough money to feel secure." Which is something the market hates with a passion. The market wants all the money in the hands of the rich, so it can be in the market. The market wants cheap labor and an immobile workforce.
The market ALREADY thought that the workforce had too much money BEFORE COVID. So they were absolutely appalled at the idea of a stimulus. So what you are seeing described as inflation is really that. Cost of goods are up because of price gauging barrels of oil, which is intentional.
The measures taken to "reduce inflation" are actually to get money out of the workforce and back into the market.
If you want to look at inflation, look at how much money is being held by the 1%.
This is a lie being spread around. It's actually extracting stimulus back from the poor, making up for lost profit during COVID, and decreasing total employment.
The market holds more power in the price of oil than the fed does with interest rates. The fed and the market are teaming up to make up for any ground (in profits and operating cost) that was lost during COVID.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WM2NS
Such a fast increase in such a short amount of time is extremely unusual, perhaps unprecedented. There's nothing even remotely close to that instant increase since the dataset begins at the start of the 1980s.
And then the COVID jump didn't only make a huge increase by itself, but the slope of the graph permanently increased.
It's basic economics that if you do that to the money supply you will get a massive jump in inflation.
M1 also shot way up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL
The consequences of money printing are extremely basic and well known since antiquity. You get both inflation and, less well discussed but more important, consequent distortion of production in the currency zone as resources are reallocated to wherever the newly printed money enters the economy. The Edict of Diocletian was an example of this from Roman times [1].
Unfortunately, in the last few years we've seen something very disturbing. Central bankers, who are theoretically chosen for their command of economics, have become delusional about this and started arguing that actually money printing doesn't create inflation at all [2]:
"But the current Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, has dismissed claims that the Fed’s money-printing is fueling today’s price spiral, emphasizing instead the disruptions associated with reopening the economy. Like his most recent predecessors, dating to Alan Greenspan, Powell says that financial innovations mean there no longer is a link between the amount of money circulating in the economy and rising prices."
This is economic illiteracy and sets us on the path to absolute ruin. If it were true then after the economy had "re-opened" (whatever that means) we'd experience deflation as prices re-adjusted back to their pre-pandemic norms, but no such deflation will ever happen, because inflation is "always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon".[3]
In my view it's all a part of the same package of social phenomena you might call "government expertise failure". Anywhere you have the perception of expertise (whether justified or not), you create people who are incentivized to abuse that perception. Governments are filled with technocrats who claim to fully understand and control large systems, but their statements and beliefs seem to have been departing from what's actually correct at an ever higher rate. We are now all paying the price for their delusions at the checkout.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_on_Maximum_Prices
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/02/06/federal-r...
[3] https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/heritage-explai...
Why wouldn't it be better to look at the total monetary base?
So the answer is likely, a negligible amount. The increase in wealth among poorer people was most likely driven by stimulus money and a bit due to wage increases (which also favored the poor).
Their hands are in this. Corona has a role too, but so does the Fed and the admin. If instead of Biden and it were the Repubs, or, god forbid, Trump, imagine the headlines and finger pointing. we'd be getting --they'd probably be overshooting with their blaming, but we'd definitely see more blame at the foot of that administration and the Fed.