Banks, credit and financial institutions whose most important functions are the accumulation of temporarily free money (passive operations) and their provision as loans to enterprises which periodically 25 require funds (active operations). To attract depositors to place their money in banks, the latter pay a definite interest on these deposits. When providing a loan to debtors, a higher interest rate is charged. The bank derives its income from the difference between these two rates of interest. Under capitalism this bank income is a part of the surplus value created by hired workers in the productive use of the loan. It is not only the free monetary means of the industrial capitalists which are transformed into capital via bank credits, but also the small savings of working people. In this way the banks expand the basis of capitalist accumulation. This is responsible for the deepening of economic crises of overproduction and the heightening of all the contradictions of capitalism. Depending on their basic functions the banks may be classed as commercial (deposit), mortgage, foreign trade, international, issue and others. The central issue banks are the "banks of the banks”. They issue securities, hold the obligatory reserves of all the other banks and provide them with credits, and conduct the cash operations of the state budget (see Budget, State). In the era of imperialism the role of banks fundamentally changes. They are transformed from humble intermediaries in the redistribution of monetary means between enterprises into the all-powerful monopolists of the money market who actively influence production (see Bank Capital). The international banks of the capitalist system serve as a means by which the major imperialist powers collectively exploit the developing countries. In socialist society the banks are used by the state as an instrument for the planned redistribution of monetary resources between socialist enterprises. Through regulating the circulation of money, the state financing of capital construction and socialist credit relations, the banks allow accounting and supervisory control to. be exercised over the economic and financial activity of the enterprises with the objective of accelerating the development of productive forces, of science and its application in the economy, and raising production efficiency (see Banks under Socialism). Further economic cooperation between the socialist countries and the extension of economic integration promote foreign currencyfinancial and credit relations and improve the forms and methods of accounting between countries (see International Bank for Economic Cooperation; International Investment Bank).