Actually, if you look beyond the recent crisis, oftentimes it did. Examples: the invention of money (make O(nm) pricing problem into O(n+m) pricing problem), invention of debt (temporarily transfer savings from a person with excess money and no business idea to a person with no money and a good business idea), etc.
> How some people believe that shuffling money about will make more wealth is beyond me.
Money can help produce new wealth, depending on how it is invested. If you move it from a place where it is stashed and unused to a place where it buys land, buildings and machines and creates jobs then the latter will create wealth once the former will not. So yes, it is not inconceivable that shuffling money around may create wealth (when it actually does is a different question).
During dotcom crisis I once heard a complaint about software engineers: "you just sit there and move bits around". Well, it turns out some sequences of bits actually create value.