—Metabolism of the Balance Sheet, XII
The Bank's Metabolic Function
Finance capital reproduces itself through the expansion of claims.
As financial claims grow relative to the capital base supporting them, the capacity to generate new claims deteriorates.
—Metabolism of the Balance Sheet, XI
The Worker's Metabolic Function
The worker's balance sheet is reproduced through wages and extended through credit.
Debt, rent, and mortgages are claims upon future labor.
Credit expands the worker's metabolic space beyond current income.
@ShahinModarres فکر میکنم بی بی دنبال یه تعادل شکننده با حفظ حملات محدود باشه. باین ترتیب میتونه ترامپ، حزب الله و رژیم رو موقتا در توازن قوا نگه داره.
@FSefaleti That is right. Markup pricing projects anticipated surplus value into the future as though it were already validated.
Yet realization of surplus remains an open question.
Interest is part of the mechanism through which future claims are tested against realized surplus.
—Metabolism of the Balance Sheet, IX
A balance sheet is not a record of wealth. It is a machine that transforms anticipated future surplus into present claims.
The central question of every crisis is whether history can deliver the surplus the balance sheet has already imagined.
—Metabolism of the Balance Sheet, X
Beyond Supply & Demand Mechanics
Modern capitalism is a world of balance sheets.
Its central question isn't who wants what.
It is whether the growing mountain of claims can still be validated by the surplus society is capable of realizing.
@elerianm A stronger labor market did not scare Wall Street.
Higher rates did.
the issue is not the jobs report.
It is a financial structure whose valuations depend on the future remaining cheap.
◇
Rollover risk is the modern form of fragility.
The problem is not the size of the debt. It is the growing share of obligations that can survive only by being continuously refinanced.
.
From John Plender's FT column:
"At the same time, Treasury funding is increasingly reliant on shorter-term securities, which means constant rollover risk. With US public debt approaching its highest ever level, this combination sounds like the very definition of a non-geopolitical financial chokepoint, with vulnerability to shocks. It also suggests there are now systemic risks in the Treasury market."
#economy #markets #bonds
The economy's problem in the second half of 2026 isn't war itself.
It's whether a system saturated with claims (on the future that already priced in) can absorb another shock without questioning those claims.
Fragility is rarely created by the event.
The event merely reveals it.
This is extremely important. Later this year the world will suffer two simultaneous disasters: the collateral damage of Trump and Netanyahu’s stupid war, and the biggest El Niño ever.
@PerBylund The problem is treating methods developed for closed systems as if they were laws of social reality.
Social forms are open, historical, and self-transforming.
@dhareket46 Capitalism is quietly undermining its own law of value.
as automation reduces necessary labor time and technology becomes the dominant productive force, labor time becomes a poorer measure of wealth.
The society beyond exchange is already being shaped within capitalism.
@ProfSteveKeen the deeper problem is not only the debt acceleration.
It is the widening gap between accumulated claims and the realized surplus (productive capacity) capable of validating them.
@KeloglanBM Regarding your question on the ontology of the model:
Social forms are organic systems. They can reproduce or unravel into new forms.
If the material conditions of their lives can be reproduced, then they remain disciplined by necessity and could be formalized into models.
2/2
Capitalism no longer accumulates primarily through retained profit.
It accumulates through the expansion of balance sheets.
Claims expand first.
Settlement comes later.
The central contradiction isn't the accumulation alone, but the accumulation of claims upon future surplus.
♡
War does not create fragility.
It reveals it.
A healthy system absorbs shocks.
A fragile one discovers that the future it has already priced in may never arrive.
Fragility accumulates long before the first missile is launched.
@KeloglanBM You are right, the model is for the abstract equity driven capitalism.
I just posted for the modern credit driven capitalism as a repost to your concerns.
Teşekkürler!
What kind of reality is motion if it survives the vanishing of time?
Time is the sediment left behind by a deeper movement.
—Written at the threshold where rigor meets wonder— for Marx