Yes, without outside influence. That's called deflation, which many consider bad because it incentivizes saving over using money, slowing the economy. We would have seen that after the crash in 07/08, but the federal government stepped in to inject cash into the economy. Should we have done that? Sure, we saw during the Great Depression what happens when you don't. But the way we did it was obviously regressive: instead of forcing some of the existing money supply, the out-of-play portion we've been talking about, back into the economy via a wealth tax, we did a bunch of things that essentially routed "new" money through the major banks (so they wouldn't fail).