Uma investigação sobre as possíveis causas e consequências da crise financeira de 2008 e sua relação com a hegemonia mundial dos Estados Unidos.

Abstract

global damages, even five years after the crisis. Regarding it and by knowing that the crisis has started in the United States (world hegemony), the present study objectives inquire about possible causes and consequences of the 2008 financial crisis and relate it with United States world hegemony. The methodology was guided by blbliographic, historical-descriptive, explanatory and exploratory research methods, with qualitative analysis and hypothetical-deductive procedures. As a result, this study confirmed the hypothesis that 2008 financial crisis origins can be found in the reactions of the United States to its hegemonic decline from the mid-1960s. The end of Bretton Woods agreements at the beginning of the 1970s and the Federal Reserve higher interest rates from 1979 to the mid-1980s changed the international financial system functioning, making it more unstable and prone to other financial crises. The United States hegemony revival in the 1980s was happened by financial means and what came next (more international financial crises and increased global speculation) reflected in the scene that led to the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and the subsequent crisis. According to Giovanni Arrighi, the world hegemony expansion by financial ways means the end of its systemic cycle of accumulation, as well as its ability to “rule” the other nations. However, there seems not to be a “candidate” to take this hegemonic gap. China (the world‟s second largest economy) is still lower than United States in political, economic and militar terms, and it doesn‟t want take on this role in the short term. A “hegemonic group of nations” are also unlikely at the moment, regarding that the BRICS (group constituted by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) still wouldn‟t have coordination capacity to present alternatives for international system reorganization. Furthermore, this study has shown that each world hegemony (Netherlands, Great Britain and the United States) was related to a kind of mainstream economics, which would be a requirement for the hegemony intellectual and moral leadership. After its hegemonic decline beginning, the United States led a gradual return of the liberal ideas and practices, with less Keynesian policies (base of its hegemony after World War II). The “Neoliberalism” was used to legitimize changes in the world economy. Nevertheless, even the 2008 financial crisis hasn‟t brought major negative effects to the predominance of neoliberal thought. It indicates, along with no other possible world hegemony in the short term, that the transition period of United States declining hegemony tends to be longstanding.