THE RECENT international fi nancial CRISIS, which begun in the middle
of 2007 with the elevation of the default on the high risk mortgages
(subprime) in the United States, assumed systemic outlines with Lehman
Brothers’ bankruptcy in September 2008. Its refl exes were felt in the whole world,
raising successive public interventions in order to guarantee the bank solvency
and to lessen the recessive impacts of the abrupt reduction of the credit. But it has
equally renewed the discussion on the “fi nancialized” character of the operations
performed by remarkably productive companies, which took advantage of
extremely complex instruments in the search for supplemental earnings resulting
from the fi nancial leverage.