The gap between how fast the broadest money is created and how fast the economy can actually produce is the quantity-theory measure of inflation pressure. When Divisia M4 grows faster than nonfarm output per hour, more money is denominating the same real product, and real assets, gold first among them, should hold their value.

$$ \text{Excess}=\text{Divisia M4 growth}-\text{nonfarm productivity growth} $$

Divisia M4 growth is the year-over-year change in the Center for Financial Stability Divisia M4 index, the broadest honest money aggregate, which survives through the institutional layer that M3 missed before the Federal Reserve discontinued it in 2006.

Nonfarm productivity growth is the year-over-year change in output per hour for the nonfarm business sector (FRED OPHNFB, index 2017 = 100). Computing both legs year over year is the honest yearly measure, because averaging single-quarter annualized rates is not the same as compounding.

Read the excess line against zero. It is positive when money creation outruns real output per hour, the tailwind for hard assets. It was sharply positive in 1971, in the 2008 crisis and the 2020 to 2021 money burst, and negative over the 1980s productivity boom. The component growth rates are in the data downloads.

• Divisia M4: Center for Financial Stability, monthly index, sampled to the quarter and compared year over year
• Productivity: BLS OPHNFB, quarterly output-per-hour index
• Frequency: Quarterly, from 1968. Each quarterly point is the year-over-year change.