Nitesh Patel, Bank of Scotland housing economist, said Scotland outperformed the rest of Britain on million pound property sales.
Here's what he suggests: The U.S. dollar, the euro and the Japanese yen (with, perhaps, China's yuan and Britain's pound) would form a currency bloc.
That financial crisis, in the course of which the Italian lira was ejected from Europe's pre-euro exchange-rate system (along with Britain's pound sterling) coincided with a huge political crisis, as corruption investigations brought crashing down the parties that had dominated Italian politics for the past 40 years.
The high value of the pound makes Britain a particularly attractive market for parallel importers.
The economic case for Britain to keep the pound remains a strong one.
ECONOMIST: The pound��s plunge is hurting, but pain is part of the remedy
Without the strong pound, Britain's inflation record would be far less impressive.
Senior officials from car company Nissan have met Prime Minister Tony Blair to voice their concerns about the strong pound and Britain's stance towards the European single currency.
But not entirely: the prevailing assumption in financial markets and among foreign investors is that eventually Britain will give up the pound.
Joining the euro means that Britain will have to lock the pound against the euro at a fixed conversion rate.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair will try to create the impression that dumping the pound is necessary for Britain to have a vibrant future.
But there are particular problems in Britain, not least the falling pound (most of the wind turbines installed there, for example, are built in continental Europe).
Not for the first time in Britain's monetary history, the pound may have the casting vote.
Fuelled by the weak pound, which has made Britain much cheaper for Europeans than two years ago, Edinburgh has been enjoying a tourist boom.
The, the Tories want to keep the pound, William Hague is adamant that Britain should be in Europe but not Europe and going one step further the United Kingdom Independence Party wants, no messing about here, wants Britain to pull out of Europe altogether, is this a sustainable platform on which to run an election campaign.
Thanks to the strength of the pound and flagging demand in continental Europe, Britain's biggest market, exports dipped in late 1998 and early 1999.
"We would like to think that we will have a very solid drug target in the next five years, " said Kerrigan, who said his project has a 1 million pound grant from the Health Research Board of Ireland and Britain's Wellcome Trust.
If Britain prizes its prosperity and political independence, it should not dump the pound and replace it with the euro.
Updown Court, a Surrey mansion that's Britain's most expensive home, took a hit due to the pound's falling strength.
The further the pound falls, the more this will raise the cost of Britain's imports and add to the surge in inflation, which remains the central bank's main concern.
The weaker pound will buoy exports, but fragile public finances suggest that Britain has much less scope to use government spending to cushion the private sector than America does as this week's flawed budget made painfully clear (see article).
Everyone knows that the Liberal Democrats, Britain's third party, want to raise an extra penny in the pound on income tax to spend on education.
In 1921 the Irish Free State won its independence from Great Britain and introduced its own coins and notes in 1928, although the Irish pound remained tied to sterling until 1979.
In Great Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair has promised a referendum on the future of the pound.
Tight monetary policy, which fuelled a strong pound , acted like a dose of salts on a swathe of industrial Britain.
The longer the pound stays high, therefore, the greater the chance that, if Britain joins the single currency, it will have to do so at a rate that a few years ago would have been thought impossibly high.
Britain's catching up is explained entirely by the surge in sterling, which makes every pound of output worth more in euros.
Britain has no intention of doing this, but the euro-zoners will surely insist that the pound shadow the euro in some way.
Given the fall in the pound of about 25% in its trade-weighted value from mid-2007, Britain's trading performance has been rather disappointing.
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