ABSTRACT
Financialization is often defined a pattern of accumulation in which profit-making occurs increasingly through financial channels rather than through trade and commodity production. Mortgage markets are a special kind of financial market. They were originally designed as credit markets facilitating capital switching to the secondary circuit of capital. The financialization of pension funds ties the fate of individual pension beneficiaries and workers to the fate of financial markets because capital meant for the tertiary circuit switches directly to the quaternary circuit. This chapter pays attention to the geographical differences in the financialization of home, but a fuller account of how space intersects with the political economy of mortgage markets and the financialization of homeowners remains a task for the future. The financialization of the real economy not only implies that Wall Street is governing more and more economic sectors, it also implies that money is increasingly being invested in finance itself and not in the real economy.
