Chicago. Ensnared in the web of global real estate finance: mortgage meltdown and marginalization

To conclude, we should summarize what the mortgage meltdown in Chicago can unveil about new aspects of exclusion in a financial accumulation phase. First of all, we witnessed how financial exclusion in the mortgage markets came into being as a byproduct of both the investor's need for yield and of the institutional processes that forced the application of 'Wall Street rules' to the secondary mortgage market, in order to boost its liquidity. Secondly, we observed that financial exclusion has a double-faced relationship with forms of exclusion that were originated in the previous phase of accumulation: on one side financial exclusion was 'built upon' previous forms of marginality, predatory loans were sold to the same population that experienced residential and workplace discrimination; but, on the other side, the collapse of the subprime mortgages scheme revealed that, the exclusion from the 'prime' credit market didn't just result in the exploitation of marginal borrowers, it actually worsened their situation, by destroying home equity and by further deepening their financial marginality. Eventually we witnessed that a significant difference between financial and earlier forms of exclusion is to be found in their different relation with capital accumulation: earlier forms of marginalization meant the exclusion from value production processes, conversely, the subprime mortgages swindle produced value through exclusion. In other words it is conceivable as a form of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2003), because use and exchange values that were, previously, embedded into homes were stripped form households, in order to 'siphon off' the capital needed to 'feed' the global financial circuit. Copyright © Franco Angeli.