The nation's balance sheet could finance such a transition with no fiscal sweat.

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The balance sheet of a carmaker's finance subsidiary, for example.

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The second was to use its balance sheet to help commercial and investment banks finance their holdings of hard-to-value securities and avoid fire-sales of assets.

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He must find a way to shrink the finance unit's balance sheet (freeing up cash for the parent to use for product development and for possible factory closings and job cuts) while keeping the profit engine from conking out.

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To finance the off-balance-sheet assets, the government set deposit interest rates at very low levels: 1% or so.

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Zapf has also had to restate its accounts for several previous years, and this week prosecutors began investigating Rudolf Winning, its former finance director, for suspected balance-sheet manipulation.

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The usual approach is to conduct reverse-repurchase agreements, borrowing from one of its 16 primary dealers for short periods of time in order to finance the assets on its balance-sheet.

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The guarantees will all be "off balance sheet", like the investments carried out under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI).

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In Britain, given the size of its finance industry, housing boom and consumer debt, the balance-sheet adjustment will, if anything, be greater.

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