Reader Bored at Work sent along this amazing letter:
The following is an excerpt from a letter dated April 27, 1999 to Antonio Martino, a founding member of Forza Italia, from Milton Friedman
“Your views and mine are currently very much the same on the euro. . . . What most troubles me as it does you is that members of the euro have thrown away the key. Once the euro physically replaces the separate currencies, how in the world do you get out? It’s a major crisis. As a result, I would strongly agree with your view that the euro should be abandoned before January 1, 2002. At the same time, the odds are very great that it will not be abandoned. The defects of the euro will take some time to show up; nothing happens very rapidly in this area. There are fewer than three years to go. Even if difficulties deriving from the euro occur in those three years, the political system is unlikely to react quickly enough to end the euro. As a result, I think it would be very desirable for some systematic thought to be given to devising some way to get out of the straitjacket of the euro after 2002. The least Italy should do is to keep intact the plates which are used to produce lira.”
For What It's Worth 
Not a unique view, even back then
Some hedgies are even cashing in on such macro views, unlike academics whose talk is cheap and not backed up with actual, time-specific bets placing substantial capital at risk
I love the last line of the quote, but if they had added the Greeks and the Drachma plates, it would have been so much better.
You may want to check the embedded link as I think there are a couple of extra letters after the “.pdf”. At least there were on my iPad.
Pingback: “Milton Friedman and the Euro”