The worldwide economic recession has spared no country as reports out of the Mushroom Kingdom indicate a currency catastrophe spiraling out of control. The Kingdom is one of the last remaining nations in the world to have no issued bank notes. Its economy relies entirely on the world’s oldest monetary unit: the gold coin.

Economists have been baffled by the abnormally high levels of inflation for such an isolated country that one would assume to still be on the gold standard.

“In actuality, the Mushroom Kingdom took itself off the gold standard in the mid 1980s,” the country’s chief economic advisor Archibald Toadstuttle said. “Our coins are merely gold plated. We learned a lesson from the great 90s ring crisis in Mobius.”

The Mushroom Kingdom has long been a leading pipe and brick manufacturing hub, but the recent downturn has spurred growth of a booming illegal drug market.

“Many of our citizens have been selling normal, super and even gold mushrooms just to get by,” police chief Kooper Hammersmith said. “The worst problem now is dealers selling poisonous mushrooms that look identical to real ones.”

The kingdom’s closest and oldest ally, Italy, has voted to initiated a large scale aid program to the nation’s monarchy.

Not worth as much as you think.