>Concentration within banking certainly lends
>itself to the parasitism metaphor.
Though money deposited in a small-town bank is highly likely to end up on the fed funds market, and *not* in local and/or productive loans. Barbara Garson's forthcoming book traces a deposit in a small-town bank in upstate New York through the fed funds market and to Chase. She then follows Chase's loan book to a shrimp farm and an oil refinery in Southeast Asia - not an ecologically pleasing fate, but not quite equal to the image of parasitic finance either.
Doug