The debt of $4.5 billion is offset by assets off the balance sheet.
A long oral cavity is a liability offset by an elongated buccinator muscle.
Many long-term insurance and pension liabilities are offset by fossil fuel assets.
Admittedly, the new liabilities are largely offset by new assets: equity stakes, the loan books of nationalised banks and so forth.
In fact, it rose by only $170 billion, or less than 2% of GDP, because valuation gains in America's overall portfolio of foreign assets and liabilities offset much of the current-account deficit.Why did American investments abroad perform so much better than foreign investments in America?
It would, of course, technically add huge liabilities to the government's balance sheet; but these would be offset by mortgage assets that are almost as large.Nationalisation need not be the end of the story.
This means that the public debt is offset by private assets.
Sir Stephen Nickell, the OBR's main economic adviser, said rising debts were offset by rising asset prices, which meant the household balance sheet "is in an unprecedented healthy state in terms of the ratio of assets to liabilities".
The deal will provide Lime with approximately $1.9 million in cash, plus the assumption of $9.9 million in liabilities associated with various ongoing projects, offset by $6.3 million in assets transferred to PowerSecure.
It is not as if those assets are not real, or that they are perfectly offset by liabilities also kept off the balance sheet.
Maílson da Nóbrega, another former finance minister and author of a 1989 plan, notes than any gains by the banks from adjustments to their liabilities, such as deposits, would have been offset by similar tweaks to their assets, like housing loans.
