Maybe I should add, the way I view the 2008 crisis, is that lot of new money were already created by private sector in the asset (housing) bubble, in the form o

Maybe I should add, the way I view the 2008 crisis, is that lot of new money were already created by private sector in the asset (housing) bubble, in the form of private debt, and this eventually starved money out of the parts of the economy which really produced something useful. So the government printing money (QE) was really trying to replace the newly created money with "official" money so that the starved portion of the economy would not end up too victimized. They basically socialized all these private decisions to create more money. Alternatively, what they could have done, selectively tax the gains from the asset bubble, as taxation without spending actually destroys money, but that's kinda hard to do both politically and technically. Although some selective spending might have been beneficial for the victims (all the poor souls who took on debt during the bubble). That's pretty much standard Keynesian economic policy - to reduce the stalemates between debtors and creditors, by reducing privately created money during the boons, and creating extra money during the busts. However, nobody today really likes taxes and government transfers, so we end up with inflation as a resolution mechanism of choice.