(2) “Current Liabilities pay no interest.” There is no systematic free lunch. This statement overlooks interest
paid on CL explicitly as in long-term coupon bonds approaching maturity, or implicitly as in Accounts
Payable offering a discount on early repayment.2 A financial claimof zero or negative effective interest
would still be a claim against the company.
(3) “Since a dollar of CL is a mirror image of a dollar of CA, the two can be restated as a net asset identified
asNWC (usually CL b CA).” Underlying this claimis the strong assumption that a dollar increase in CA is
economically equivalent to a dollar decrease in CL. Such symmetry is inconsistentwith economic logic
or casual observation for the following reasons:
a. The firm has less control over repayment of its loans from customers than it has over repayment of its
debt to suppliers.
b. The offset is likely to distort the firm's stated FCF