Turks happy to lose millions from their bank accounts

Businessmen, bankers and families across Turkey have been watching millions vanish from their savings this week - and they are all delighted to see them go.

Businessmen, bankers and families across Turkey have been watching millions vanish from their savings this week - and they are all delighted to see them go.

Until now, Turkey had the embarrassing distinction of having the world's largest denomination banknotes. The biggest, at 20,000,000 lira, was worth £8. But on 1 January, the government sliced off six zeros.

"We are happy to reinstate the dignity of the Turkish lira," said the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, plucking a crisp sheaf of the new, slimmed-down banknotes from a bank machine near his holiday home.

The cascading zeros had long been seen as a source of national shame - evidence of past economic failure and 30 years of surging inflation.

Their removal has also ended years of through-the-looking-glass accounting, where monthly wages were measured in billions and the national budget calculated in quadrillions.

With one million old-style lira worth a mere 40p, Turks were used to thinking big.

As a good example of the situation, the Turkish franchise of the game show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? had to be called Who Would Like 500 Billion?