The political economy of mortgage securitization and the neoliberalization of housing policy in Canada

Abstract

The Canadian case represents a distinct variety of financialization under capitalism, one conditioned by the structure of its mortgage markets and the dominant role played by the state in the process of mortgage securitization. Securitization has been a key component of the neoliberalization of housing policy, with new state roles in the insuring, directing and funding of residential mortgage-backed securities both undergirding and justifying the federal shift from the provision of social rental housing toward supporting a rental market increasingly characterized by private sector individualunit landlord-investors. It was primarily the state's control over, and utilization of, the securitization process that maintained the solvency of the financial system in the face of the global financial crisis. However the resulting rapid uptake of liabilities on behalf of both the state and households brought forth new contradictions, necessitating new policy experimentation and reregulation, to which securitization was once again directed and which now articulate the political economy of housing in the country.

Keywords

securitization neoliberalism mortgage markets financialization governance public policy housing financial crisis Canada

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