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Abstract: Changing a country's currency involves a redenomination risk arising due to assets and liabilities that are impossible to redenominate because of contracts governed by foreign law. Depreciation or appreciation of the new currency could, therefore, result in losses or gains, thus creating a risk for economic agents. The risk can be estimated by splitting the economy into public, private, banking and central banking sectors, and summing up exposed aggregate assets and liabilities. This method is applied to Greece showing that exiting the EMU would certainly entail forbidding redenomination losses for the Greek public sector, leading to default. Surprisingly, however, the impact on the private and the banking sectors would actually be positive (gain). The impact on the Bank of Greece would be ambiguous depending primarily on the legal status of TARGET2 liabilities. It is notable that even the Bank of Greece possesses a significant cushion in the form of bonds under foreign law. In all, the redenomination risk for the Greek economy is modest, with the exception of the public sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Costas Lapavitsas charts the growth of the 'unstable, unequal and slow-growing' system of financialised capitalism that has taken root in mature economies over the past 40 years, and outlines initial steps to disentangling businesses, services, workers and households from its grasp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Costas Lapavitsas considers the political economy of bloated finance and makes a case for establishing democratically-run public banks, which, he asserts, could strengthen the social and the collective in modern economies [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]