Changes in M1, M2, and M3 over Time

I was curious about this, so I plotted how M1, M2, and M3 have changed since 1959:

The graph shows the increments for each aggregate, i.e., the yellow region is the part of M3 not in M2, and total M3 is the region shown by all three colors. The leveling off of M2 and M3 around 1990, the time period when aggregates became less useful as policy tools, and the steep growth in M2 and M3 since 1995 are interesting. Definitons of M1, M2, and M3 can be found in the Fed Education site glossary. The second graph shows M1, M2, and M3 as above as percentages of total M3 at each point in time. The constancy of size of the incremental part of M2 is interesting: