The creator of the cartoon that lampooned the Federal Reserve’s second round of quantitative easing as a fiasco that would damage the global economy after it benefitted the wealthiest Americans now says he got it wrong.

It’s still hard to believe that the video “Quantitative Easing Explained,” with two puppies with robotic voices discussing arcane Fed bond buying, would be an instant sensation when it was uploaded in November 2010. But it was. It eventually garnered 6 million views.

In a New York Times op-ed Tuesday, Omid Malekan, the creator of the video, says he was as surprised as anyone about the popularity of the video.

“Like most things that go viral, it was more a testament to what was on people’s minds than the quality of the work,” he said.

The cartoon called former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke “The Bernank” and Goldman Sachs “The Goldman Sachs,” words that entered the economic and investing zeitgeist.

The video was part of an intense negative reaction to the Fed’s second round of asset purchases. The Fed bought Treasurys and mortgage-related debt from financial firms to lower long-term interest rates.

The cartoon said that the Fed was simply printing money and the global economy would eventually blow up, but not before “The Goldman Sachs” and other banks benefitted.

Now Malekan says he kind-of, sort-of made a mistake.

“ ‘Quantitative easing worked, just not in the way it was intended. Before I explain why, I need to admit what I got wrong.’ ” — Omid Malekan

Contrary to the cartoon’s prediction, quantitative easing didn’t “blow up the global economy,” Malekan added in the op-ed.

But Malekan still says he was right in the sense that QE was a policy designed to enrich banks.

Economists are not pleased with the half-hearted apology.

Tim Duy, professor of economics at the University of Oregon, said the Fed is designed to work through the financial system. He notes that the policy helped real people find jobs.

The U.S. unemployment rate has declined to 3.9% from a peak of 10% during the crisis.

The cartoon “was among a whole swath of negative commentary about Fed policy that turned out to be fairly ill-informed,” Duy said. It helped create a firestorm in Congress against the asset purchases.

Robert Brusca, chief economist at FAO Economics, said “virtually all the sarcasm in the cartoon is over things that have not happened.”

“It is humor and sarcasm blended with FAKE NEWS POINTS to ridicule something that in fact turns out to have worked quite well, or at least that made a positive contribution,” he said.

“The unemployment rate today is extremely low. Inflation is where the Fed wants it. job growth is solid. GDP growth is the best of the recovery. Nothing bad has happened,” he said.

Time to make a cartoon about the cartoon? “I think so,” Brusca said.