The financial industry, in its infinite, predatory quest to rebrand human misery as ‘opportunity,’ has finally peaked. We are now being told, with the straightest of faces by people who smell like expensive scotch and the tears of the working class, that taking on a 30-year mortgage transforms a ‘retail saver’ into a ‘hedge-fund manager.’ It is a masterful piece of linguistic gymnastics. It’s the kind of logic that suggests that if you jump off a skyscraper, you aren’t falling; you’re simply a ‘short-term atmospheric navigator.’

Let’s dissect the corpse of this argument, shall we? The premise is that by using leverage—a fancy word for ‘money you don’t have and will never truly own’—to purchase a house, you are performing the same high-wire act as a billionaire at a quantitative fund. The only difference, of course, is that the billionaire isn’t sleeping in his collateral, and if the market dips three percent, he doesn’t end up living in a 2014 Honda Civic. For the average suburbanite, ‘leverage’ is just a fancy way of saying you’ve bet your entire biological future on the hope that some other sucker will be even more desperate than you in twenty years.

The sheer audacity of comparing a middle-class family to a hedge fund is where the comedy truly begins. A hedge fund manager diversifies; the homeowner puts all their eggs in one wooden basket and prays to the gods of interest rates that a termite infestation doesn't wipe out their ‘portfolio.’ A hedge fund manager exits a position when the fundamentals change; a homeowner is tethered to a zip code by a 30-year chain, forced to watch as the local school district crumbles and the neighboring property is turned into a 24-hour tire fire. You aren't managing a fund; you’re managing a liability that requires you to pay for plumbing repairs just to keep the ‘asset’ from literally rotting away.

The ‘Left’ will look at this and perform their usual song and dance about the ‘eroding dream of ownership,’ as if owning a debt-trap is a human right. They want to subsidize the misery, ensuring that every citizen has the equal opportunity to be crushed by the same banking cartels. Meanwhile, the ‘Right’ will treat this as a triumph of the free market, ignoring the fact that the entire housing sector is a government-propped-up Ponzi scheme supported by the Fed. Neither side wants to admit the truth: the mortgage is the ultimate tool of social control. A man with a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is a man who will never quit his soul-crushing job, never go on strike, and never dare to imagine a world where his value isn’t tied to a fluctuating appraisal of his kitchen cabinets.

Historically, this ‘transformation’ has worked out beautifully—for the banks. In 2008, a whole generation of ‘hedge-fund managers’ realized that their leverage worked both ways. When the tide went out, they weren't wearing swimsuits; they weren't even wearing skin. But humans have the memory of a concussed goldfish. We see the headline ‘mortgages transform your portfolio’ and we think, ‘Yes, finally, I am a titan of industry,’ rather than realizing we are just serfs with a slightly better internet connection. We have been conditioned to believe that a liability is an asset. We have been taught that a debt is a ‘tool.’

In reality, you are not a manager; you are a tenant with extra steps and the added burden of replacing the roof. The bank is the hedge fund; you are merely the high-risk, low-reward security they’ve packaged into a derivative. They get the interest; you get the privilege of painting the walls. This is the ultimate victory of the neoliberal project: convincing the sheep that the fence around them is actually a sophisticated investment vehicle. You aren’t building wealth; you’re building a shrine to the compound interest you owe to a corporation that doesn’t know you exist.

So, by all means, sign the papers. Step into the ‘portfolio.’ Enjoy the feeling of being a financial wizard as you calculate the ROI of your water heater. Just don’t be surprised when the transformation ends, not with a golden parachute, but with a foreclosure notice that reminds you exactly how little a ‘hedge-fund manager’ you actually were. We are a species of deluded gamblers, and the house—specifically the one you’re currently ‘investing’ in—always wins.