Are you sure that's correct? If I'm reading the article you linked correctly, they basically decided to count savings accounts as M1 instead of M2. But since M1 is included in M2... this shouldn't change the total value of M2? So all of the increases in M2 were actually due to printing of more money (among other things).
I don't think so. When the pandemic hit, the fed made the reserve ratio 0% for all accounts, so counting savings accounts as M1 wouldn't really change how much money banks could lend. However, even under normal circumstances (transactional accounts have a reserve ratio of 10%, other accounts have a reserve ratio of 0%) counting savings accounts as transactional (M1) would actually increase the reserve requirement for banks, decreasing the amount they could loan and therefore decreasing M2 overall.
