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A atuação do Federal Reserve System - Fed - durante a formação e estouro da bolha imobiliária mostra as dificuldades de um banco central em processos financeiros de grande magnitude. O Fed foi leniente com o desenvolvimento da bolha, por considerar que a alta do preço dos imóveis ajudava a reduzir os riscos de instabilidade financeira gerados pelas crises de 2000-2002. Quando a crise do mercado subprime se tornou aguda, em setembro de 2008, o Fed atuou agressivamente como emprestador de última instância, expandindo a base monetária para conter os riscos de inadimplência generalizada no mercado interbancário. Nos dois momentos, o Fed agiu com pragmatismo e discricionariedade, contrariando as teses dominantes do "Novo Consenso", mas foi "prisioneiro" dessas teses e dos interesses do mercado financeiro: a tese de que a desregulamentação dos mercados favorece a sociedade inibiu iniciativas intervencionistas para restringir as inovações financeiras no mercado imobiliário; a tese de que o mandato da Autoridade Monetária deve ser a estabilidade de preços contribuiu para a leniência com os riscos crescentes nos mercados financeiros.The Fed's actions during the development and burst of the US real estate bubble highlight a Central Bank's dilemma when facing a financial process of great magnitude. During the bubble's development and growth, the Fed was lenient since it considered that the increase in real estate prices helped reduce the risk of financial instability brought on by the financial crisis from 2000 to 2002. When the subprime crisis surfaced, the Fed started to act vigorously as a lender of last resort, with a vigorous expansion of the monetary basis in order to defend the system from the risk of a widespread default in the interbank market. In both cases the Fed was pragmatic and discretionary, and did not follow the mainstream thesis in economics analysis, the so called "New Monetary Consensus". However, at the same time, the US Central Bank is a "prisoner" of these thesis and of the financial interests that help it sustain them: the thesis that the financial market's deregulation benefits the entire society inhibited interventionist actions that would have restrained the new financial instruments in the housing market and the thesis that the main goal of the Monetary Authority should be price stability contributed to the leniency with the increasing risks in the financial markets.

This study analyzes the manner in which the financial deregulation and bankruptcy of the credit system of the mainstream economies (United States, United Kingdom, Japan and European Union) are influencing the financial and technological integration and restructuring processes of the emerging countries with respect to the new development bank of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).The objective is to show that actions against the current deregulated neoliberal finance model (such as the creation of the BRICS bank, construction of the pipeline infrastructure and establishment of networks parallel to the Internet, which is controlled by the United States) could trigger a geopolitical rearrangement in the current model of globalized accumulation of international finance capital. In order to conduct this investigation, we surveyed and collected statistical data and economic and financial information at the following research institutions: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the U. S. Treasury, the Divisions of Research & Statistics and Monetary Affairs of the U. S. Federal Reserve Board, Eurostat (a Directorate- General of the European Commission), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA - Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada). This study aims at providing a series of reflections and questions for the debate on how the financial crisis and the indebtedness of the United States and the mainstream economies are forcing emerging countries to seek: a) new forms of regional integration; b) economic, commercial, technological and financial arrangements; and c) sustainable alternatives that minimize social inequalities aggravated by economic neo-liberalism's globalization policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]