There are other problems with the babysitting co-op. For example, imagine that the co-op now has a whole lot of members who have kids and want babysitting but aren't suitable for babysitting themselves (for some reason). Which is analogous to the real economy, where we can have people sitting around who can make shoes or repair furniture but we have all the shoes/furniture we need really cheaply thanks to China.

Ultimately long-term, sustainable economic growth can only come from improvements in productivity. So if quantitive easing is undertaken to build things that boost national productivity, it probably isn't such a bad thing. If the money is just going to go on buying consumer stuff from overseas I question its value.