It is widely perceived that they will be bailed out by the government should mortgage defaults force them to pay off bondholders whose debt they guarantee.
She refuses to share her balance sheet with stressed countries by allowing the issuance of euro-bonds, until they reform, even though such reforms cannot be implemented in time to head off sovereign defaults that would take down many under-capitalized European banks, now desperately juggling their books to inflate their capital ratios.
At that same time, Sprint did know that a control position in Clearwire would set off cross defaults at Sprint pertaining to covenants on old bonds floated years ago by Nextel.