P. Emanuele De Girolamo
emadegi.bsky.social
P. Emanuele De Girolamo
@emadegi.bsky.social
Political economy of finance and Economic Sociology of work. Researcher at the University of Milan.
Big thanks to the editorial team and reviewers. I am also deeply grateful to everyone who supported me throughout the development of this paper.
December 19, 2024 at 4:55 PM
9/9
Centering predation in our understanding of financialisation changes how we see its core dynamics. Predation isn’t peripheral or an exception—it’s central, built on innovations in leverage and asset capture that have redefined financial power.
December 19, 2024 at 4:55 PM
8/9
Subprime wasn’t isolated. Its roots trace back to corporate raiders and real estate developers, not traditional lenders.

From 1960s asset stripping to 1980s equity-driven practices, subprime extended these logics into a new era.
December 19, 2024 at 4:55 PM
7/9
I propose Raiding Finance to capture this logic of predation. Unlike rentierism, it’s not about collecting rents but about using leverage to capture and strip assets quickly.
Subprime wasn't an anomaly—it reveal a broader shift in how predation operates under financialisation
December 19, 2024 at 4:55 PM
6/9
Subprime relied on repeated refinancing, where new debt replaced old debt, sidelining borrowers’ incomes entirely.

Default was not a failure but a planned outcome—a strategy to extract value by seizing and liquidating homes. This wasn’t rent extraction—it was something new.
December 19, 2024 at 4:55 PM
5/9
A closer look at subprime reveals something different. These loans weren’t designed to be repaid.
Instead, profitability was decoupled from repayment, with defaults built into the strategy. Lenders extracted value through refinancing and foreclosure from the home equity.
December 19, 2024 at 4:55 PM
4/9
Subprime mortgages are often viewed as the most extreme example of this logic. Loans targeting marginalized groups, designed with high fees and interest, appear to exemplify predation by rentiers extracting from the most vulnerable.
But does this interpretation hold up?
December 19, 2024 at 4:55 PM
3/9
Financialisation has often been understood through the rentier model, where financial actors extract value by controlling scarce resources like housing, land, or credit. Predation, in this view, is about rent extraction—charging others for access to these resources.
December 19, 2024 at 4:55 PM
2/9
This article revisits key historical cases to rethink how financial predation changed and became central under financialisation.
December 19, 2024 at 4:55 PM
3/9
Financialisation has often been understood through the rentier model, where financial actors extract value by controlling scarce resources like housing, land, or credit. Predation, in this view, is about rent extraction—charging others for access to these resources.
December 19, 2024 at 4:06 PM
2/9
The article revisits key historical cases to rethink how financial predation changed and became central under financialisation.
December 19, 2024 at 4:06 PM