So if you are a creditor of a bank, you are legitimately concerned that forbearance is a way for banks to avoid raising the amount of capital the banks need to absorb potential losses.

BBC: Business

Receivership, by contrast, is a process started by a company's bank, or other creditor, who has lost confidence in a firm's ability to repay its debts.

BBC: HMV logo

Germany is also the home to the European Central Bank and the biggest national creditor to indebted nations within the eurozone such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland all of which would make Germany's exit from the eurozone logistically difficult.

BBC: Soros calls for Germany to 'lead or leave euro'

Edgardo Angara, chairman of the Philippine National Bank, PAL's biggest domestic creditor, reckons killing off the carrier could cut GDP growth by as much as 1%.

CNN: PHILIPPINE AIR GETS GROUNDED

Of course, a broke creditor can keep partying if a crazy credit card lender or a mortgaging bank is happy to keep lending.

FORBES: The Eurozone Must Follow The U.K. To Resolve Its Crisis

Asset encumbrance is when a bank has to pledge its assets - the loans and investments it has made - to a creditor when borrowing from that creditor.

BBC: Business

And like Japanese banks, the Chinese ones gather deposits from thrifty households but lend only some of these back out, mainly to companies, parking the vast excess in government bonds and with the central bank (although the Chinese government, unlike Japan's debt-laden government, is a net creditor that invests these excess funds overseas).

ECONOMIST: Japanese banks