Securitising Suburbia: The Transformation of Anglo-American Mortgage Finance

Abstract

Informed by and contributing to approaches to finance that draw on Foucault and actor-network theory, the paper focuses on the contemporary transformation of Anglo-American mortgage finance. This transformation is understood to entail the lengthening of mortgage networks and their increased interconnection with the multiple networks of the capital markets; the making of suburban subjects as property investors in order to produce and extend mortgage borrowing in a booming housing market; and, in particular, the constitution of mortgage-backed securitisation (MBS) techniques through the calculative tools of off-balance sheet accounting, asset management, and credit rating. MBS is the practice of ‘bundling’ together a stream of future obligations arising from mortgagors repayments to provide the basis for the issue of, and the payment of principal and interest on, securities.