This issue of Financial Market Trends compiles, as always, the articles that have been released online over the past few months. It features, as Part I, selected articles based on presentations given at the Symposium on “Financial crisis management and the use of government guarantees” in October 2011, which were first released between October and December 2011. The Symposium, part of the OECD’s work on financial sector guarantees, gathered policy makers, policy consultants and other academics to discuss the policy response to the financial crisis, the use of guarantees, failure resolution, banking and sovereign debt interconnections, as well as other financial safety net aspects. Policy proposals covered issues as to how to improve the use of government-supported guarantees and the design of the financial safety net, with a view to enhancing existing mechanisms to avert or contain future crises. A summary of the Symposium is included at the end of each of the articles to facilitate their distribution as self-contained papers.