Even allowing for the time delays and the slower circulationof money in a more slowly moving economy, it seems as though monetary shenanigans which started in 2007 should have been felt by the summer of 2012.
The mining of data on how different banknotes move through the economy would make it easy to spot suspicious transactions for example, a large deposit of notes that had been out ofcirculation for a long time.
"The crucial thing is this diamond has been in circulation certainly since the beginning of the 16th Century during which time it has been in the hands of whole sequence of different rulers, " told Radio 4's Today programme.
At the same time, production of motor vehicles has hit a ten-year high, with cars in circulation reaching 10.1 million in 2010, up from 6.6 million at the start of the millennium.