Now that one-time asset has become a huge liability for the taxpayers.
The "Graduation" program gave participants a one-time asset transfer, often providing people with animals, such as cows or chickens, from which they could earn income.
On Thursday, Mr. Goldberg sharply increased his estimate for Citigroup's quarterly earnings to $1.30 a share, from 97 cents a share, thanks to one-time asset sales as well as better-performing capital markets that could raise trading revenue.
Though Mitsubishi Estate reported on Friday that profits nearly tripled, to 19.4 billion yen ($161 million), in the half-year ended Sept. 30, its gains came from one-time asset sales; revenue from core operations fell 9percentt.
But the performance in fiscal 2000 was buoyed by several one-time asset sales, including $763 million for the company's stake in Echostar, a direct-to-home satellite business, and roughly $400 million from its stake in Ansett Airlines.
E.On, Germany's largest utility company, Thursday said net profit fell to 4.34 billion euros ($5.8 billion) last year from 4.65 billion euros in 2003, when earnings were boosted by one-time asset sales.
The ING Group, based in Amsterdam, posted a fourth-quarter profit of $1.9 billion, up 21percentt from the period a year earlier, on one-time gains from asset sales.
In fact, though agency employees like Mr. Heafy enjoy telling of the strange assets - the coal mines, the almond groves, the dog kennels - the F.D.I.C. must liquidate, the bulk of the agency's assets at any one time consist of loans acquired from failed banks.
Legal bombast and bluster notwithstanding, the two sides could settle their differences with an option they have been discussing on and off since early last year: a tax-free stock swap in which Mr. Malone would exchange his IAC holdings for IAC assets, which at one time included the Home Shopping Network.
One time, my Dad's deafness was actually an asset.
