Easy come, easy go: A German woman burns worthless banknotes during the Weimar Republic. One exponent — the Brooklyn collage artist Mark Wagner — carves up tough, "hyper-engineered" United States dollar bills for insertion in his paper mosaics that court controversy. Debate rages about whether Wagner is a capitalist or anarchist. According to Wagner, busting fiscal taboo wins more attention than using any other paper medium, but it costs — his career has consumed about $10,000 in dollar bills, raising the question of whether the damage is tax-deductible. Wagner's artful fiscal violence was foreshadowed by the 1996 "tele-robotic" internet experiment Legal Tender, where users were invited to inflict damage remotely. According to the critic Kenneth Baker, Legal Tender mocked Treasury crowing about would-be counterfeit-proof currency: the motive for the online money mischief was satirical, it seems. In another epic case, the motive for destruction was clearly survival. During the age of that short-lived German farce, the Weimar Republic, banknotes were burned for warmth because their value had dipped below their worth as fuel, making them true disposable income.

The insanity stemmed from the tough terms of the Versailles treaty that concluded the First World War. Pushed into recession, Germany printed money furiously to pay its debt, but the policy devalued its currency and sparked hyperinflation, which meant buying wood for your stove cost more than turning cash into ash. Enter the Rentenmark, which was unveiled in 1923. Based on hard assets — mortgaged land and industrial goods — the Rentenmark eventually ended the madness. Now, although last year the Bundesbank burned stacks of flood-damaged notes, destroying Euros is verboten. Ditto Australian dollars. Australia's 1981 currency act forbids deliberate damage and destruction without a legal permit — however you might obtain it, should you be odd enough to want to ignite polymer: the firm fabric from which modern notes are made. Breaking the law, which covers both current Australian money and old coins and notes, can mean detention — or a fine. According to financial analyst David Bakke, mutilating money is almost always deplorable. Doing it for warmth during the Weimar Republic was all right, Bakke says. The bills that Mark Wagner defaces provide some value as art to admire, he adds.

"I still disagree with the practice," he says. "Why not just use facsimiles of dollar bills and donate the actual cash?" Equally unimpressed by the antics of Cauty and Drummond, Bakke describes their pounds-sterling pyre, which spawned a film and a book, as "a publicity stunt". "That money could have been put to much better use — helping out the local community would be one of them," he says, adding that the option proves that money amounts to more than IOU notes — it has intrinsic worth. Consultant Barry Maher, whose client list includes the banking giant Wells Fargo and the American Bankers Association, sees more positives in mauling money. "It certainly makes a statement. And my guess is that most of us would have a more visceral reaction to the desecration of currency than we would to the destruction of any other false gods. It certainly says something about how important a role cash plays in our lives," Maher says. He adds that he sees nothing morally wrong with mutilating a banknote, though depending on the size of the currency, there may be any number of less costly ways of making whatever point might be intended.

"I'll bet almost anyone can come up with an almost infinite number of better uses for the cash," he says, adding that he is considering opening a home for battered banknotes and would happily provide alternative shelter to threatened currency without regard to ethnicity or denomination. Whatever the rights and wrongs of bashing banknotes, the practice can exact a heavy psychological cost, it seems. After their 1994 fiscal fire, Cauty and Drummond looked harrowed and haunted, according to the Guardian. Worse, according to the Guardian, they have never been the same. In 2004, Drummond told the BBC he regretted the stunt. So too did his children, even more, he said. Perhaps, as the rave culture analyst Sarah Champion forecast, the two talents are "skint" (broke). At least, however, Cauty and Drummond possibly made other Brits slightly richer. According to the "quantity theory of money", destroying some raises the remainder's worth.