Germany could go back to the deutschmark, but Greece cannot go back to the drachma.
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Widely circulated joke emails featured drachma bank notes bearing the image of then-Prime Minister George Papandreou.
To generate confidence in the drachma in the midst of a crisis would be very challenging.
Debt which was previously due to be repaid in euros would have be renegotiated in drachma.
CNN: The trillion dollar question: Will Greece exit the euro?
Taking Greece out of the euro would force it to adopt its old currency again, the drachma.
The third alternative is for Greece to leave the currency union and then devalue the New Drachma.
Anyone who has cash deposits that the Greek government can convert to Drachma will be severely hurt.
Best of all, Mr Simitis has almost achieved his aim of steering Greece's drachma into the euro zone.
Greece will exit the Eurozone and return to their former currency, the Drachma.
"If there's a switch from euro to drachma nobody can say with certainty what's going to happen, " she says.
Foreign-exchange markets would take care of devaluing the drachma relative to other currencies.
Those who advise them to go back to the drachma, should think about the additional pain that isolation would create.
With the drachma reissuance it will join the Peso, Kenyan Shilling and other paper currencies utterly worthless outside country borders.
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Or, more likely, they may simply be assuming that the worst outcome, the return of the drachma, still remains improbable.
Having Greece return to the Drachma and defaulting on their debt through devaluation and money printing is a much worse option.
This is purely hypothetical, because Greece uses the euro and cannot go back to the drachma even if it wanted to.
Depositors would rush to pull their money out of Greek banks to protect their savings from being converted into new drachma.
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And devaluation-induced competitiveness would be ephemeral as inflation ravaged a restored drachma.
Ordering new drachma notes could take months and could leak, encouraging Greeks to increase euro withdrawals from banks, accelerating the exit timetable.
The move speaks to stiffing euro creditors, after which any government debt denominated in drachma would require astronomical rates of interest to float.
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Because the Drachma will fall in price rather sharply these products will shoot up in price and make Greece an uncompetitive market for tourists.
And remember the franc, the deutschmark, the lira, and the drachma?
Argentina never stopped using the peso, but Greece discarded the drachma.
Many fear a run on the banks, causing the country to be forced out of the euro - heralding in turn the return of the drachma.
The consequences almost certainly would include the inability of Greek corporates to service their euro- and dollar-denominated debt if the drachma is readopted as an operating currency.
This solution of last resort would allow member countries such as Greece or Spain to introduce a new local currency the new drachma or the new peseta, for instance.
Considering a popular option among the commentariat that Greece ditch the euro in favor of the drachma, it would be hard to think of a more dangerous idea.
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That is so because while Greece may re-introduce the drachma, the debt its government has raised and that it cannot repay in full is still denominated in euros.
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However, if it were to reintroduce the drachma, the new currency would quickly become worthless, while the private Greek economy went underground and continued to do business in euros.
Once the new currency is in place, mortgages to Greek banks would likely be repaid in drachma, while repayments of mortgages to foreign banks may have to be renegotiated.
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