From Keynes’ “Open Letter to President Roosevelt,” published December 16, 1933:

“Rising output and rising incomes will suffer a set-back sooner or later if the quantity of money is rigidly fixed. Some people seem to infer from this that output and income can be raised by increasing the quantity of money. But this is like trying to get fat by buying a larger belt. In the United States to-day your belt is plenty big enough for your belly. It is a most misleading thing to stress the quantity of money, which is only a limiting factor, rather than the volume of expenditure, which is the operative factor.”

This near the very bottom of the Great Depression. Perhaps Keynes was wrong then. But is there not a strong case to be made, nevertheless, that the recent rounds of QE were, what with all that heaping-up of excess reserves, just so much unhelpful belt-loosening?

What say ye, my Market Monetarist friends?