Rightly, Mr Uribe sees a "humanitarian exchange" (the Orwellian term of its promoters) of Ms Betancourt and other hostages for guerrilla prisoners as a recipe for more kidnappings.Checking over-mighty executivesYet Colombia would still be rash to allow Mr Uribe's re-election as long as its democracy remains unconsolidated.
They were not even mentioned at all in the unconsolidated accounts, though in the consolidated version, produced four months later, such liabilities totalled 1 trillion won.Another problem was the culture of impunity surrounding auditing failures.
So are banking, insurance and other relatively unconsolidated industries, such as car-parts makers and suppliers to big supermarkets, says a recent report by CSFB, an investment bank.European telecoms deals have already resumed.
Most seriously, an optimistic view is taken of "current assets", which may include payments not due for a year or more, while some liabilities do not appear on the unconsolidated balance-sheets at all.
"This is the last great software market left the last unconsolidated market," says Zach Nelson of NetSuite, which provides a suite of software services including accounting, sales-force automation and customer service.
The consolidated accounts of listed firms analysed by the stock exchange showed that in 1996 their debts were 37% higher and their profits 37% lower than in the unconsolidated accounts.
A lot are unconsolidated piles of rubble left over from the beginning of the solar system.
All big Korean companies have to release unconsolidated accounts, but chaebol typically list only a handful of their subsidiaries on the Korea Stock Exchange, which requires consolidated accounts that show at least some of the dealings with other firms.Comparing these two sets of accounts is illuminating.
The eastern districts, because they lie on unconsolidated, geologically unstable land and because they have been the more crowded and less affluent parts of the city, have been prone to disaster.
It originates mainly as the result of organic activity: algae generate tiny needles of aragonite within their tissues, and after their death such needles fall to the depositional surface as unconsolidated mud, which soon recrystallizes to calcite.
Although hydraulic mining is sometimes used to mine coal underground, its primary application is on the surface, where it is a practical way to mine relatively fine-grained, unconsolidated material from placers, tailings, alluvium, and lateritic deposits.
