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The Romans continued to use a medium of exchange with some, however small and decreasing, intrinsic value that acted as a brake however ineffective it ultimately was. The Romans never imagined such things as credit default swaps (CDS), high frequency trading (HFT) or commodities exchanges that enable the manipulation of prices up and down. They also never had the ability to conjure circulating currency out of thin air.

The economic mess is Euroland has not sunk to the level I expected by now. They have an amazing variety of tricks propping it up, foremost among them the willingness to lie completely and absolutely about what is going on. Eventually the whole house of cards is going to collapse and it will probably happen here in as little as three days. The average uninformed American will probably describe it as "all the money just vanished into thin air."