"Money is created through bank debt. When you go for a mortgage through a bank, they give you $100,000 to buy a house and basically send you out into the world to bring back $200,000 in the next twenty years. The first $100,000 is principal, and the second is interest."

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Italy may well be the main problem. It has benefited most from the euro by having been able to get the euro interest rate instead of what otherwise would have been its own. That would be much higher because Italy has been accumulating so much debt. In the past, Italy has inflated away its debt. The virtue of the euro is that Italy can't do it alone. A tight ECB policy wouldn't permit that to happen again.

— Milton Friedman