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At 13:59 31/05/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Paul:
>
>Fixed capital for an individual bank influences the rate of interest that
>the bank can charge. Generally speaking, larger more efficient and more
>sophisticated banks can accept a smaller spread between the interest on
>loans and the interest on deposits.
>
>However, isn't banking as a whole a deduction from surplus value? If so,
>both the constant and variable capital invested in banking should be
>included as a part of the aggregate surplus value.
I agree that banking as a whole is a deduction from surplus value. Thus
when calculating the rate of surplus value using i/o tables I include all
of the financial intermediation' entries in the use table as part of
the surplus and aggregate it with the reported gross surplus.
However that relates to the flow aspect of the national accounts,
in calculating rates of profit one is looking at stocks not flows.
The question then is whether the stock of value represented as
buildings etc held by the banks should count as part of the
capital stock, or whether it should appear as a quite different
category - unproductive value stocks. If so, does it affect the
general rate of profit.
Your spread argument, provides I suppose a potential mechanism
by which transfers may occur between the productive and unproductive
sector in response to variations in stocks of buildings held by the banks.
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