On the last page it says "Currency union without fiscal union is bound to fail -- and we are seeing the failure right now." I guess the argument is that if eac

On the last page it says "Currency union without fiscal union is bound to fail -- and we are seeing the failure right now." I guess the argument is that if each country has their own currency, they can devalue it when they are having problems and get out of trouble and the Euro prevents that possibility? But does anyone know how things worked in terms of this issue back when gold was more the common currency and before paper money was more common?