Charles, if you want to understand the banking system, I think you might want to look in another direction. Thanks now make their money from activities that most people would not traditionally associate with banking. Fees are now central. Not just your for your overdrawn check, but from organizing takeovers and mergers and the like.
Nomi Prins's book clearly shows how banks are losing ground to companies like Goldman Sachs. The private equity groups that are taking over your Detroit companies are much more important than the banks, except for banks like Citicorp, which are really not banks anymore, but rather financial conglomerates. So maybe we could drop Gesell and look more deeply into finance capital. On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 10:23:43AM -0400, Charles Brown wrote: > > CB: I'm trying to figure out whether the capitalist system has qualitatively > new characteristics related to the dominance of finance capital over the > rest. This seems to imply we have to have a direct struggle against finance > capital that was not there in the classic Marxist struggles. > > >From my discussions with you over the years, I understand that you believe > that Lenin's analysis of finance capital is out of date. What are the new > characteristics of finance capital , and what form should the struggle > against them take ? Should we be focussing on the industrial proletariat > still ? > -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu michaelperelman.wordpress.com
