ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the main features of Brazil's financial regulation and to show how they helped the economy to deal with the consequences of the 2008-09 financial meltdown. The first crucial ingredient of Brazil's response to the financial crisis was the country's international reserves. The second crucial factor in Brazil's successful response to the 2008-09 crisis was, ironically, the countrys high reserve requirements on banks. Enter the third crucial component of Brazil's successful response to the 2008-09 financial crisis: the existence of public commercial banks to keep liquidity within the domestic financial system and, more importantly, to act in a counter-cyclical way. The fourth reason for Brazil's relative success in dealing with the financial crisis is the existence of a national development bank, the Brazilian Development Bank, which is fully owned by the federal government and through which the Brazilian Treasury could finance private agents in periods of financial turmoil.
