[Danieru]

An interesting point. Do they happen to have a bank account with billions? Think of all the methods money arrives into a large corporation. There must be thousands of accounts.

Imagine the accounting department going through hundreds of accounts pulling a few million from here and there. At the end of a rush week the CFO logs into their bank's website and sets up a bill payment for $3,000,000,000.00.

Now on the government side, does the government have a massive bank account? They need to collect taxes so there must be something that can handle super massive payments.

On the one hand it is silly to think of governments' and corporations' accounts being run like a scaled up family. Yet I also cannot imagine that everything is done with massive IOUs.

[refurb]

Take a look at any large corporation's balance sheet. They usually have short-term cash (basically bank accounts) and short-term cash equivalents (very liquid assets like gov't bonds).

So basically you are correct. The CFO devises a plan to pay that fine by pulling cash from a number of different sources.

I also assume that the gov't is paid with either a single payment or a couple payments. I can't remember the context in which I saw it, but there was a copy of a check posted on a website for several billion dollars. Looked like any other corporate check (with a few more signatures on it).

[toemetoch]

The Mitsubishi check?

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2011/06/12-money-shots/

Since this kind of money can disturb a bank (a bank lends a multiple of what it has floating) wouldn't it be "cleaner" if the government just opened an account at the same bank and had the money transferred there?