but you're right. "how quickly" isn't the most important characteristic.

OK let me try to steelman your argument. Company a has liabilities due soon and must be financed. It usually does so by taking loans from a bank which is repaid by the proceeds from the final good they produce. There's a extrinsic shock that suddenly made company b unable to repay their loan to the same bank. Because of this the bank is unable to finance company a at the same rate. In a elastic money supply a government can increase the ms to increase the amount of currency units to reduce the cost of capital and stabilize prices so that company a can finish their production and the damages of company b failing is minimized. If you want to avoid a gov as money supply creator a bank could also just increase their own currency units Essentially you moved the risks of failure out of bank a into the currency in both cases. Sound right?