Before the single currency, the Euro, the southern countries, aka the PIGS, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Span and somewhat Ireland went through cycles of politicians overspending, running up huge debt then printing enormous amounts of local currency which paid off debt and devalued their national currencies.<p>In Italy, in the 1970s the small change disappeared, the coins were worth more as scrap metal than as money.<p>The European single currency links the countries together so that 'quantitative easing' transfers wealth from the German savers and pensioners to the spendthrifts.<p>This is slowly playing out, I suspect it will be another twenty or thirty years until the full effect is seen.