So worthless has the currency been rendered by the country's hourly jump in prices, that the government formally ditched it in favour of the US dollar years ago.

In Venezuela, one US dollar might buy 6.3, 12, 172 or 190 bolivares, depending on whether you're an official importer, average citizen or prepared to dodge scammers on the black market.

As capital flight, soaring interest rates and recession hit public coffers before Argentina finally gave up its one-for-one currency peg with the US dollar in 2002, regional governments were paying employees and contractors with imaginatively-named IOUs that became legal tender in a range of shops.

In Greece, which on Wednesday became the latest country to enter technical default with the International Monetary Fund, one euro is still worth one euro, although access to the common currency is restricted as the banks shutter against a feared run on deposits.

With cash in short supply and recession biting, pockets of barter economy have popped up around the country, while there is already talk of the government using IOUs, backed by future tax receipts, to pay state employees and pensioners.

If, under the worse-case scenario, Greece were to lose the support of the European Union and European Central Bank, default on more of its debts and gradually slide out of the eurozone, the country may have to drop the euro as it is currently used in favour of Greek euros, or reintroduce the "drachma", calling it "new drachma".

The former option, indeed, appears to be the easiest for now, according to National Australia Bank's senior currency strategist Emma Lawson, who points out that the country has had five years of financial upheaval to draft plans for a separate monetary unit.

"One way of it doing it is that the euro notes currently in circulation issued by the Bank of Greece – and these have a particular identifier – would automatically be considered the new currency," she said.

"That's one way of doing it, and that's probably the way it would roll."

Under this scenario, Greeks with notes issued by one of the other 18 eurozone members would have to swap them for the domestic euros by a set deadline, before an official exchange rate was set. Money held in bank accounts, most of which is frozen at the moment, would also be devalued at the same rate.

Those notes which have already been physically removed from Greece would also assume that new value, be they in some bordering country or a plane, boat or car ride away.

Under this hypothesis, the government in future might impose stringent controls on the removal of hard currency out of the country, so those sitting on non-Greek euros who declined to exchange them before the deadline would not be able to try and pass them off as "good" euros later.

However, money that was electronically transferred out the troubled country before the current capital controls were imposed would retain its current value, even if it had been deposited in a euro-denominated account.

Reintroducing the drachma, or whatever Greece opted to call it, is a more complicated proposition, involving careful design and then the selection of a note-printer and coin-minter, if it decides to use coins at all. If it returns to the drachma, Greece could use the original printing plates and coin stamps, with an adjustment to dates and codes.

As in the euro example, the Greek central bank would simply swap the current unit for the new currency at one-for-one before setting a new exchange rate. That rate would then depreciate quickly when the currency was left to trade with others, pushing the printing presses into overdrive.

In Argentina, for example, the US dollar at first fetched 1.4 pesos, then about four a year later. The greenback currently buys about 9 pesos.

Similarly, the Greek euro or new drachma would settle at a rate which reflects Greek's trade and capital account balances, interest rates - set by a newly autonomous central bank -  and other factors that made it attractive or otherwise to foreign investors.

After months, if not years, of pain, Greece would re-emerge as a low-wage, low-cost, competitive exporter and tourist destination for the rest of the eurozone - as it was before it joined the European Monetary Union in 1999.