On 5-6 September 2012, Urs W. Birchler, SUERF President and Professor at the Department of Banking and Finance, University of Zürich, opened SUERF”s 30th Colloquium on “States, Banks, and the Financing of the Economyˮ. Around 120 participants gathered at the University of Zürich, Switzerland, to discuss the complex interrelations between states and financial systems, which have developed over the past five years of the economic, financial and sovereign debt crisis. Instability in banking has spread to states and vice versa, with failures in both sectors looming. Economic and political fragility are feeding each other. The crisis increasingly hurts the real economy. This in turn further worsens public finances and bank balance sheets.
The papers included in SUERF Study 2013/2 and SUERF Study 2013/3 are based on contributions to this Colloquium.
