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At its most severe, the monthly rate of inflation reached 3.25 billion per cent, equivalent to prices doubling every 49 hours. The US Dollar to Mark conversion rate peaked at 80 billion.

Sick of inflation yet? Come World War Two, incredibly, the German people had to learn their lesson again. The Nazi state converted its debts into banknotes, pushing the volume of currency in circulation up from 11 billion Reichsmarks in 1939 to more than 70bn by the time Hitler poisoned and then shot himself, his dog, and his mistress. The survivors were forced to use cigarettes, chocolate, tinned beef and soap as money once more because the government ordained notes and coins had lost all currency thanks to their huge over supply.

With global inflation ticking higher three decades later, the Bundesbank adopted its first money supply target in 1973. In December of 1974, it began announcing the target to the public each year, and inflation was whipped. By the fall of 1978, and with inflation in the US and United Kingdom lurching back towards double digits, consumer prices in West Germany were rising by barely 2% per year.But the initial relief allowed a flirtation with looser money to creep in. By 1981, inflation had reached 6.3%, and so the Bundesbank set about slashing its money supply target.

It cut the target from a maximum of 9% growth to just 5% annual growth by 1985. Only in one year of this period, 1983, did money growth slightly exceed the target range, says Robert L. Hetzel, writing in the Economic Quarterly of March 2002.

Broad money (M3) growth fell from 10% in the 1970s to 6% in the 1980s. By retaining price stability as its primary objective despite the high unemployment rates of the 1980s, the Bundesbank gained credibility for its policy of price stability.

Come the end of the 1990s, the Bundesbank had whipped inflation for more than five decades. Politicians in Rome, Paris, London, Madrid and Dublin looked to the West German model but refused to apply it themselves.

So why not get the Germans to apply it, instead...now that was an idea! Only thing was, that pesky money supply target kept getting in the way of growth, of debt, of real estate prices. And so with inflation like interest rates sitting near or below the 2% annual target, Europe quietly did away with its limit on money supply growth.

The M3 measure of the Eurozone's money supply the same M3 measure that the US Federal Reserve stopped tracking and reporting at the start of 2006 was supposed to grow by no more than 4.5% per year. This initial target represented one of two monetary pillars supporting the entire Eurozone project when the European Central Bank took over the reins of policy at the end of the 1990s.

At last count, however, Europe's M3 money supply was ballooning at a near three decade record of 11.5% per year in January 2008.

What does that mean for you, me, and the rest of the world trying to defend our savings and income against the global upturn in consumer prices? All too often, short term traders looking for quick gains in gold will point you to a very short term connection between gold and the Euro. And fair's fair.