Preface

I. The basis of the credit system: On the art of lending money

1. The notorious shortage of money in the capitalist business world and how it is overcome and exploited through the first fundamental equation of finance capital: Money becomes a commodity as capital, thereby becoming money capital itself
2. Creating credit and money through the second fundamental equation of banking: Debt functions as capital and generates ability to pay
3. The constant effort to establish certainty in the credit business by means of the third fundamental equation of the financial industry: Liquidity generates trust, trust generates liquidity
4. How the state certifies finance capital’s creation of credit and money by adding an equation to the other three as ‘bank of banks’: What acts as money in payment transactions between credit institutions is a fully adequate substitute for the legally valid money ‘commodity’ (legal tender)

II. The somewhat different growth: The accumulation of fictitious capital

1. Advancing from lending to trading in fictitious capital
2. The business items of the capital market, and their value
3. Capital growth through speculation
4. Business with ‘risk transfers’ and its politico-economic importance
5. The financial industry and ‘the business cycle’: Twofold growth and the necessity of economic crises

III. Financial sector and public power: A conflict-ridden symbiosis

1. How the state looks after financial business: Serving the banking industry while issuing a mandate
2. Money and debt: Utilizing the finance business for the national budget
   Digression: The great controversy over the state financing itself by creating money — and what it reveals about the nature of money
3. Necessity and ideal of governments’ growth policy: Success by exerting a controlling influence on the money and credit business

IV. International financial business and the competition of nations

1. Convertibility of currencies: States internationalize the legal basis of the banking business, and its protection by monetary sovereignty
2. International trade with commodities and currencies
3. World trade with money capital
4. The ‘one world’ of money capital and its state guardians

Addendum: National economy with internationalized capital

© GegenStandpunkt 2022