I have heard arguments made that big deflation has already been diverted
I would say this is not possible because the economy is bad, money velocity is low, and people are attempting to save instead of spend. In other words, the debt is unservicable. When the debt is unserviceable, you just have a continuous series of defaults, and since the money supply itself *is* debt, it shrinks and you get cascading deflationary collapse. Deflation is currently an enormous problem for every nation, so they either let it happen and the system collapses, forgive the debt and issue non-debt based currency (Bitcoin anyone?), or they devalue the fuck out of the dollar.
The price of oil is also a huge canary in the coalmine that deflation is imploding the system. They basically have to unleash a huge tsunami of freshly printed fiat to stop it, but that fiat has to be distributed in the hands of the entire population or it solves nothing. Random central banker choices would be forgiving things like student loans, helicopter money, "basic income", or all three. Of course the "solutions" could collapse the system itself, so you have a situation of do nothing and implode, or forgive a few debts and create some wheelbarrow hyperinflation to maybe extend the collapse a little longer.
The funny part about the situation is, Bitcoin essentially is helicopter money for all intents and purposes. If central bankers knew the system was doomed and had to issue helicopter money, it would be the most effective way to do so while still having plausible deniability. They could then manipulate exchanges to pump it higher and give people increased buying power to negate deflation and stimulate the economy. Giving a bunch of lower income people free money is one of the fastest known ways to stimulate an economy.
