I am very curious to know how GSK actually pay $3 billion. Does the CEO and/or board members walk into their bank and request for a transfer? What are the typical security restrictions in place?
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.
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).
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?
So, essentially, their customers "pay" it (including the government itself -- Medicare, for example).
My opinion is that people need to go to jail. And corporations need to have monopoly rights stripped or curtailed. THEN, problems such as these may lessen.
They would be fined e.g. 100M for such behavior and then receive 10B in "failure" support from one of the tax payer backed pots.
With that fresh inflow of funds they would then just carry on doing the same (but with 9.9B more on their books)
Crazy world we're living in.