This series of articles, forming a special edition of Economic and Labour Market Review, constitutes a progress report on a project that was launched in the autumn of 2008 and is ONS’ response to the financial crisis. It reviews how ONS statistics and analyses were already recording the credit boom and fi nancial innovation of recent years, and what improvements might be possible for the future, to record the continuing effects of the fi nancial crisis and the effects of government interventions, and to raise the profile of sectoral balance sheets in macroeconomic analysis.