Remaking Mortgage Markets by Remaking Mortgages: U.S. Housing Finance after the Crisis

Abstract

This article examines the post- financial crisis reregulation of US housing finance, focusing on reforms to rein in excessive risk taking and reconstitute the private circulation of mortgage debt. We begin by situating current initiatives—namely, the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010—in a much longer trajectory of attempts to construct a national market for home mortgages. Following the theorization of the economy of qualities by Callon, Méadel, and Rabeharisoa, we argue that a dominant theme throughout has been creating or fixing mortgage markets by performing work on the commodities—the mortgage products—that circulate in them. In light of this history, we argue that Dodd-Frank’s primary novelty lies in the way it alters relations between those products and market-supporting institutions, laws, and regulations. We conclude that this shapes a new set of contradictions and conflicts between market liquidity and risk taking, on the one hand, and the original concerns with financial safety and soundness, on the other.