Duncan comments:
But then the balances (positive or negative) in the banks are functioning
as money capital, and the workers and capitalists are accepting credits
in the banks as payment for labor-power and commodities. Thus these
credits are (by hypothesis, as you describe the model) the measure of
value and the means of circulation and payment in your economy.
They are the means of circulation and payment; but as for a measure of
value... I can't really answer this until I manage some simulations,
but I would think that in some circumstances (a strong boom in the
model economy, the multi-sectoral equivalent of the booms I've modelled
in a single-sector version of Minsky), those banks balances would sum
to a negative (i.e., the capitalist class as a whole would be in debt
to the banks). This doesn't mean that the valuation of commodities
produced in that time period is in sum negative!
In other words, this model results in a very strong separation between
a valuation of commodities (which reflects the net productivity of
the system as valued in terms of some commodity numeraire or labor)
and the net stock of money.
As it happens, this position is consistent with my interpretation of
Marx (which I'm getting around to presenting -:>); but I did not
undertake this model building exercise to support this interpretation,
but rather simply as a way of developing a multi-sectoral version of
Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis. So this coincidence is
fortuitous rather than contrived.
Cheers,
Steve