The development of capitalist industry produces concentration of banking, and this concentrated banking system is itself an important force in attaining the highest stage of capitalist concentration in cartels and trusts. The cartel itself presupposes a large bank which is in a position to provide, on a regular basis, the vast credits needed for current payments and productive investment in a whole industrial sector. Cartelization also means greater security and uniformity in the earnings of the cartelized enterprises. The dependence of industry on the banks is therefore a consequence of property relationships. An ever-increasing part of the capital of industry does not belong to the industrialists who use it. Finance capital develops with the development of the joint-stock company and reaches its peak with the monopolization of industry. With cartelization and trustification finance capital attains its greatest power while merchant capital experiences its deepest degradation.