Urban and rural markets, weekly markets and fairs, multiplied in Europe or intensified their activity, assisting the penetration of the local economy by money and credit in many forms. The difficulties which the local economy encountered with the easing of the circulation of money were not confined to problems of debasement or revaluation of its own coinage, or of the diversity of the systems of moneys of account. However, important metallic money might be in the local economy of the modern age, it in no way hampered the development of credit. The international flows of specie throughout the modern age were doubtless strongly influenced by movements of capital and in particular by government transfers. Control of public finance and taxation were not the exclusive domain of the central governments during the modern age. Western Europe especially was characterized by a bewildering gap between the growing power of state authority and its inability to substantiate this power financially and fiscally.