If you are sneaky and in a slump, and you give the printed money to the right folk, it can kickstart trade. This was the idea behind giving all that money to t

If you are sneaky and in a slump, and you give the printed money to the right folk, it can kickstart trade. This was the idea behind giving all that money to the banks, but the banks went and sat on it and now have the largest cash reserves for pretty much ever, so they were able to dump some of their other liquid assets, namely oil, which is a lot of the current glut we are blaming on OPEC. Economics is messy.