Over the last generation, market-based solutions have slowly grown in popularity as an anti-poverty prescription to closing the wealth gap. But while market-based movements such as empowerment and enterprise zones and new market initiatives were taking hold, a parallel, shadow trend has been moving rapidly afoot, tapping the very same low-income and working class communities targeted by Michael Sherraden and other architects of the asset uplift school. This paper examines this latter, parallel trend of what I term financial fracking—that is, the use of consumer financial products to extract equity and wealth.

Specifically, Financial Fracking in the Land of the Fee, 1980-2008, explores the historical reasons for the sharp increase in economic inequality in the United States, the policies and policy-makers that have aggravated and remedied this disparity, and the impact of this gap. It does so by focusing on a generation of consumer financial policies in four spheres of contemporary life that have served as traditional pathways to upward mobility: housing (subprime mortgage and home equity loans), education (student financial aid system), employment (payday loans), and transportation (auto insurance).