Regulação, Concorrência e Inovações Financeiras: Quatro Décadas de Dinamismo, Euforia, Fragilidade Financeira e Crises no Sistema Financeiro dos EUA

The article deals with the major changes occurring in the course of the last four decades in the US financial system. It highlighted the role of financial innovations for the chain of events that engendered the crisis of subprime segment of the housing market and spread to the US financial system and the rest of the world. Highlights the role of banks and financial institutions, as well as the main financial instruments involved in vulnerability observed in financial markets. Beside the economic instability - from 1970 - the coming technological innovations in the area of information and communication and increased competition among depository institutions regulated and unregulated financial institutions, the vision of the work is that governments have a role decisive for the formation of an environment of financial fragility through its liberalizing reforms. This allowed the unfolding of a crisis comparable in terms of instability, only to the Crisis of 1929. Universal banks were the basis of the spread of pervasive effects of the boom and the financial crisis in an environment of global competition and operating in liberalized financial multimarkets.