A Marxian Model of Market for Money Capital: Profit Rate, Interest Rate, and Leverage Ratio

In this paper, I develop a Marxian model of market for money capital populated by capitalists equipped with equal money capital endowment but with heterogeneous linear production technology. Due to a maximization of return on equity, capitalists with relatively weak technology, yielding profit rate lower than interest rate, become a money capitalist (lender) and capitalists with relatively strong technology, yielding profit rate greater than interest rate, become an industrial capitalist (borrower). The equilibrium interest rate is derived by the associated demand and supply relation. In this context, Marx’s notion of the role of credit system in an expanded reproduction of capital is understood in terms of an efficient reallocation of funds through credit market. From this setup of the model follow two essential relationships Marx establishes between the average profit rate and the interest rate: (i) that the profit (rate) sets a maximum limit of interest (rate), and (ii) that the two rates are correlated. Lastly, depending on the financial sector’s leverage ratio, which is supported by its intermediation technology, the financial sector may be more or less profitable than the industrial sector. This result suggests that one aspect of the industrial-banking capitalists antagonism surrounding the division of profit into interest and profit of enterprise lies in the banking capitalists’ strenuous efforts towards continuous innovations in financial intermediation technology

Low Cardiorespiratory Fitness is an Independent Predictor of Metabolic Syndrome in Young Korean Adults

Objective: To investigate the relationship between cardio/respiratory fitness (CRF) and metabolic syndrome (MS) in young Korean men. Design: In a cross-sectional study, we examined 909 young Korean men (mean±SD age, 24.0±2 years) who were healthy and not taking any medications affecting blood pressure, glucose, or lipids concentrations. Body fatness, resting blood pressures, and fasting blood levels of lipids, glucose, and insulin were measured with our standardized laboratory protocols. CRF was quantified as the maximum volume of minute oxygen consumption measured during a graded treadmill test. Metabolic syndrome was defined with the National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III criteria and a modified cut-off value of waist circumference from the Asia-Pacific Perspective: Redefining Obesity and its Treatment. Results: Group analyses showed significant and inverse dose-response trends between the metabolic syndrome markers and CRF levels such that men with high and moderate CRF levels had more favorable profiles in body fatness, resting blood pressures, mean values in fasting lipids, glucose, and insulin, and homeostasis model of assessment-insulin resistance than men with low CRF level. After adjusting for several potential confounders such as age, smoking, and body fatness variables, the low and moderate CRF groups had odds of 4.64 (95% CI, 2.00 to 10.79) and 2.57 (95% CI, 1.04 to 6.34) for having metabolic syndrome than the high CRF group. Conclusion: These findings suggest that low CRF is a significant and independent risk factor for metabolic syndrome in young Korean men

Supersymmetric Higgs-portal and X-ray lines

We consider a Dirac singlet fermion as thermal dark matter for explaining the X-ray line in the context of a supersymmetric Higgs-portal model or a generalized Dirac NMSSM. The Dirac singlet fermion gets a mass splitting due to their Yukawa couplings to two Higgs doublets and their superpartners, Higgsinos, after electroweak symmetry breaking. We show that a correct relic density can be obtained from thermal freeze-out, due to the co-annihilation with Higgsinos for the same Yukawa couplings. We discuss the phenomenology of the Higgsinos in this model such as displaced vertices at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, references adde