Instead of facilitating home ownership, mortgages have instead become a means of hooking people on a debt treadmill, while becoming the main means of creating liquidity for debt-based capitalist economies. Mortgages now comprise more than 60 percent of the money stock in both the US and the UK. Correspondingly, statistics that show that fewer people in the US and UK now own their homes outright than in 1968 (Milani, 2000, p. 45; Rowbotham, 1998, p. 17). Mortgages also negatively influence building life. With mortgages usually set at 25 or 30 years, asset life is encouraged to match the finance period; and just when you own your home, you have to replace it.