He said the government would swap enough bonds with banks and pension funds for securities with lower interest rates, of 7 percent, to save $4 billion next year in financing costs.

They are swapping bonds for other bonds that already exist this time, which is even less likely to do anything than swapping them for bank reserves.

Brokers for the individual owners will also get a gift box for each client they persuade to swap new bonds for old.

As it currently stands, the proposal sees bondholders accepting to swap old bonds for new ones with maturities ranging between 20 to 30 years and a coupon of 4% to 5%.

Then, he reached an unexpectedly generous $7.4 billion loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund that has allowed the country to swap bonds for new debt at lower interest rates.

Foreign banks negotiating with the Government won a weeklong extension, until next Friday, of the deadline Russia set to swap defaulted bonds for new securities.

What got the J. P. Morgan team rolling was this thought: instead of swapping bonds or currency or interest rates, why not swap the risk of default?

For a dealer like Lehman, swapping bonds and futures is not improper.

This is very important because it means that you can swap bad bonds from countries in difficulties with the rescue mechanism's AAA bonds.

Under the restructuring, Brazil swapped $49 billion of debt held by the banks for fixed- and floating-rate bonds.