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Comment by venomsnake | Hacker News Reader

Well the ECB could just print couple of trillion euro and hang them out divided to each country. We will have a little inflation and that's it. Greece will be debt free and there will be no burdens on the taxpayers.

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Actually Greece has a printing press for Euros (apparently you can tell which euro notes are printed in Greece by the serial number). I have been half expecting Greece to solve all its problems by just printing.

They need authorization from ECB and the printer prints only 10 euros.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/06/return-drachma...

I think if you are going to run the biggest heist in history you are not going to ask permission :)

The Euro notes has codes for both the issuing central bank and the printer facility.

http://www.eurotracer.net/information/notes.php

Me thinks even the Greeks would not have too much problem putting the German code on their new notes. Of course this would be interpreted as a declaration of war by the eu so it would not be wise.

In the early 20th century there was a high-profile case in Portugal, where a forger managed to convice Waterlow and Sons (a currency printer in the UK, since bought by De La Rue and currently one of the Euro printers) to print batches of portuguese notes.

These were, of course, indistinguishable from real notes. The scheme ultimately failed when a mistake caused the printing of duplicate serial numbers already ordered by the state.

I doubt a scheme like this would work today in the slightest. If in an un-digitized world this didn't last long, in today's world it would quickly be discovered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alves_dos_Reis

This is a bit different in that Greece has control over a real printing press. While it would be unlikely to be kept hidden, it should be possible for the Greek printers to avoid overlapping serials numbers.

In practice they could only start their own “unauthorised” printing if it was kept secret since if it leaked the ECB would just issue new notes. This would likely be highly disruptive to the ECB as it was to Portugal.

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