The Interaction of Political, Fiscal and Financial Stability: Lessons from the Crisis

The current financial, economic and fiscal crisis is among other things characterised by complex interrelations between financial, fiscal, macroeconomic and political instability. One instability breeds another, with feedback loops generating self-reinforcing adverse cycles: The financial crisis triggered the ‘Great Recession’. Countermeasures by governments – to save banks and bolster up aggregate demand – ultimately jeopardized fiscal sustainability and bred the fiscal crisis. The latter in turn destabilised sovereign bond markets and banking systems in several countries. Political instability resulted from the substantial fiscal consolidations forced upon governments in the light of threatening or actual loss of access to financial market financing, and the accompanying deep recessions and sharp increase in unemployment. Political instability in turn further erodes economic and financial market confidence, thus worsening short and long-term economic and fiscal prospects, and further aggravating financial instability. In the EU and more specifically the Euro Area, multiple channels of spillovers and contagion turn the problems from purely national phenomena to ones of EU-wide and ultimately even global scope. Thus, apart from national political processes, Euro Area and EU-wide economic governance has been criticized for not addressing reform needs decisively, thus prolonging and deepening the cycle of instability

States, Banks and the Financing of the Economy: Monetary Policy and Regulatory Perspectives

On 5-6 September 2012 SUERF held its 30th Colloquium “States, Banks, and the Financing of the Economy” at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. The papers included in this SUERF Study are based on contributions to the Colloquium. All the papers in this publication discuss from different angles the complex interrelations between states and financial systems, which have developed in recent years with economic, financial and sovereign debt crises. The contributions look primarily on the monetary policy and financial regulation and supervision perspectives. In the preceding SUERF Study (2013/2), the focus of the contributions also delivered at the 30th SUERF Colloquium is on fiscal policy and sovereign debt perspectives

Germline mutations in ETV6 are associated with thrombocytopenia, red cell macrocytosis and predisposition to lymphoblastic leukemia

Some familial platelet disorders are associated with predisposition to leukemia, myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) or dyserythropoietic anemia. We identified a family with autosomal dominant thrombocytopenia, high erythrocyte mean corpuscular volume (MCV) and two occurrences of B cell-precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Whole-exome sequencing identified a heterozygous single-nucleotide change in ETV6 (ets variant 6), c.641C>T, encoding a p.Pro214Leu substitution in the central domain, segregating with thrombocytopenia and elevated MCV. A screen of 23 families with similar phenotypes identified 2 with ETV6 mutations. One family also had a mutation encoding p.Pro214Leu and one individual with ALL. The other family had a c.1252A>G transition producing a p.Arg418Gly substitution in the DNA-binding domain, with alternative splicing and exon skipping. Functional characterization of these mutations showed aberrant cellular localization of mutant and endogenous ETV6, decreased transcriptional repression and altered megakaryocyte maturation. Our findings underscore a key role for ETV6 in platelet formation and leukemia predisposition