One of the key lessons of the GFC is the criticality of macro-financial linkages. However, these are still not well understood, while an integrated analytical framework has remained elusive to this day. The “national wealth approach”, as a component of the broader balance sheet approach that relies on wealth as the analytical anchor and on the national accounting framework and concepts, aims at elucidating these key linkages through “data bilingualism”. The early results are encouraging, in terms of better understanding old systemic crises, bringing about deeper insights on financial stability challenges in key countries, like the US and China, and developing a more articulate crisis prevention policy agenda.