To fight inflation, European Central Bank (ECB) announced 10 successive interest rate hikes, starting on 27 July 2022, igniting an unprecedented widening of interest rate spreads in the euro area (ΕΑ). Greek banks, however, recorded among the highest interest rate spreads, far exceeding ΕΑ median and weighted average. Indeed, we document a strong asymmetric response of Greek banks to ECB interest rate hikes, with loan interest rates rising immediately, whilst deposit interest rates remained initially unchanged and then rose sluggishly. As a result, the interest rate spread hit one historical record after another. Greek systemic banks, probably taking advantage of the high concentration and low competition in the domestic sector benefited from key ECB interest rate hikes, recording gigantic increases in net interest income (NII), and consequently, substantial profits (almost €7.4 billion in the 2022–2023 biennium). Such excessive accumulation of profits (that deteriorates the living conditions of consumers) by the banking system could be called the inflation of “banking greed”, or bankflation. This new source of inflation created by the oligopolistic structure of the Greek banking sector counterworks the very reason for ECB interest rate increases and requires certain policy analysis recommendations in coping with it.

This paper aims to show the crisis of contemporary criminal systems, however legislative excess of stipulating the penalty of imprisonment, as a penalty depriving freedom, while sometimes stipulating the penalty of imprisonment is mandatory, rather combining it with other penalties, and more than that, depriving the judge of his discretionary power in determining the punishment, this threatens the theory of individualized punishment in a fatal way, so as a result, prisons are overcrowded with inmates, which places a heavy burden on the state from an economic perspective that exhausts and drains its budget, while there is also a social cost of the prison sentence, paid by the prisoner’s family and close circle, moreover the greatest cost is the failure of the penal system to perform its role towards the prisoner by reforming and rehabilitating, therefore, this paper focuses on presenting the causes of the problem and its negative repercussions, trying to find some solutions, by presenting alternatives to the prison sentence, while expanding the view to include some criminal systems, such as the Islamic criminal system and its decision on the penalty of exile.