Ake, it isn't that new money has been "printed" exactly...it's been merely created on balance sheets and ledgers and digital records in the form of debt...but it hasn't been printed. The printed cash and coin in circulation is probably less than 1 per cent of all the money that is supposedly in play in the system right now, most of it sitting supposedly in the banks (but it's not really there because it's not real).

For a really interesting read on how banks have done this by creating debts (through lending money) and drawing interest on those debts, thereby creating vast amounts of fictional money and steady inflation...read "The Creature from Jeckyl Island", among various other books on the subject.