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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 3547749, member: 93416&quot;]I certainly agree we have to be careful, but in the message you referenced two sets of attitudes, one of today and the other of the late 19th century. I would not judge either to be particularly useful as models for 3rd century Rome, but surely 19th century money itself was much more like that of ancient Rome, of the two?</p><p><br /></p><p>The situation Jorg pointed to seems to me to be a rather decisive large debasement, that rapidly lead to the destruction of the denomination itself. And that is a pattern we seem to see quite a lot. For instance, the Shahi Jitals underwent a quantum drop in fineness, from about 70% to about 30% around 1000 AD. And thence forward dropped quickly to below 5% in some jurisdictions. We see something similar with the Western satrap coinage, which was very stable for centuries but debased rather rapidly under Gupta rule. Or for something different but similar, look at the weight reductions applied by Ilkhans after Ghazan, which once set in train, rapidly all but destroyed the intrinsic value of his dirhem. The UK 1920 reduction (et al) fits a similar pattern in some ways…..</p><p><br /></p><p>There are counter examples to this, which we could discuss, but in general I seem to see a “first cut is the deepest” sort of thing being quite common. That is to say, a very decisive use of value reduction, no matter how visible to the (modern/untutored) naked eye, very often has seemed to trigger dramatic changes in the currency.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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