This theory, which began far from the mainstream but forced its way in when a bubble-bursting ‘Minsky moment’ broke the long boom in 2008, holds that the quantity of money in an economy is created by the interplay of economic forces rather than by an outside agency such as a central bank. Although portrayed as all-powerful (and so responsible for all financial instability) by Milton Friedman (1912–2006; Nobel Prize 1976) and the ‘monetarists’ propelled to prominence by 1970s stagnation, central banks such as the US Federal Reserve can only indirectly and weakly control the private-sector banks
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