Chapter 9 "Financial Rulers of America"
The concentration of economic power, characteristic of monopoly capital, finds its most advanced expression in the concentration of financial power and , of particular note, in the merging of industrial and financial monopolies. Those at the peak of this structure of finance capital are the oligarchs who control the economic life of the country.
The most profitable corporations are industrial, and the multi-billion-dollar tycoons generally own industrial property. But much of the surplus value generated in industry by industrial workers filters through the financial system and is distributed thereby to the ultimate capitalist beneficiaries, with the financial intermediaries tending to extract in the process increasing shares of the total.
Credit - the accumulation of savings and their loan to capitalists - has been a major factor in the growth of production throughout the history of capitalism. In this century, the epoch of imperialism, the role of financial intermediaries has burgeoned. More and more of their operations are to fund parasitic activities - a wide range of essentially nonproductive projects, including speculative ventures - and the proliferating bureaucracies of imperialist governments with their huge military structures.
The financial apparatus has become more and more complex. In addition to standard commercial banks, mutual savings banks and Federal Reserve banks, there are investment and merchant banks, stock brokerage houses, insurance companies and investment companies. More and more industrial conglomerates have their own financial subsidiaries. Banks have become chains, branching out across state lines and international boundaries. Transnational banks, operating around the globe, are the largest and most important. The transnational money-center banks of New York, London, Tokyo and Frankfurt are more than ever hubs of economic power in the capitalist world.
U.S. financial institutions now hold and control about half the shares of major U.S. corporations. The richest capitalists collect only part of their revenue directly; a major part is held for their accounts by the financial holding companies, banks and insurance companies in which they have a large or decisive ownership interest. In addition, the financial companies have set up "mutual funds" to mobilize for investment the savings of small capitalists and the petty bourgeoisie."
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