Well, the truth is this: The collapse of Enron back in 2001 revealed that the biggest financial institutions, here and abroad, were busy creating products whose sole purpose was to help companies magically transform their debt into capital or revenue.
Of course, it's possible to transform the debt ceiling into something more than simply a procedural hurdle.
The time since then has been used to transform the debts of the French banks, and also those of the German banks and those of the Greek billionaires, into debts of the institutions, ie the taxpayer.
"For every African villager whose life has been transformed by debt cancellation," she sighed, "that is our legacy .And then came Ed.
The emphasis of the talks is on "transforming the debt structure over 10 years," meaning extending the life span of shorter maturity bonds to 10 years, and on deciding which bonds would be eligible for buyback schemes, one person involved in the discussions said.
I have gotten married, held managerial positions both for a small business and a large federal contractor, transformed my debt into retirement accounts and the down payment for my first house, and in the spring of last year I became a father.
("Swap" is a broad term for many types of financial derivatives directly agreed between two parties, including credit default swaps and currency forwards. The most common is the interest rate swap, which allows people to transform floating-rate debt into fixed-rate debt and vice versa).
But a temporary backstop was possible, along with a restructuring in which either 1) creditors agree to discount debt in exchange for warrants (for potentially viable enterprises) or 2) creditors agree to transform (possibly discounted) debt into new equity -- a new capital structure in which former shareholders are wiped out.
Through a program called #pimpmyfactura, the underground visual arts scene scene is bailing out three community day cares by transforming their debts into artwork.
That eight-year failure is why the ecological debt will inevitably transform into a new economic debt dwarfing our current woes.
