What's with the Adjusted Monetary Base?

Dennis Gartman is prone to getting carried away from time to time, but it is usually for a good reason. Today Gartman is bugged by what the Fed is doing with the Adjusted Monetary Base. Specifically he thinks the Fed is ridiculous to let the BASE fall in light of the credit crunch and the profound need for liquidity in the marketplace. Enough from me, here's Dennis:

The Fed needs to be very public in either explaining why the adjusted base is falling and what it intends to do to change that, or it will be the seen as provoking the most serious economic collapse of the past several decades. Perhaps the base is falling for some arcane, non-economic reason that we and other classical Monetarists are not cognisant of. If so, and if the Fed knows why this is so, then the authorities need to explain it to us and to the market in very clear terms... and quickly. We do not say that lightly, and we do indeed understand the seriousness of our comments here. What is happening to the adjusted monetary base is indefensible... and it is dangerous.

Dennis probably has a very good point, but didn't his tone remind you of Jim Cramer's infamous rant on CNBC about the Fed last year? Personally, I'm leaning toward the belief that something weird is going on with the numbers, but I'm also a little bit surprised that no one else has mentioned this yet. One caveat on the graph is that the data is only current through December 19th. It may very well be that the Fed has already corrected this problem.