In the United States, there is a huge difference between owning your house outright and through a mortgage. As a leveraged investment, homeowners are more home

In the United States, there is a huge difference between owning your house outright and through a mortgage. As a leveraged investment, homeowners are more home speculators, requiring ever increasing values to be profitable. Up until the last decade, this had been a great engine of wealth creation for the middle class.