I reckon that CNP will never have to actually repay 7B in the...

I reckon that CNP will never have to actually repay 7B in the short term, just de-leverage down to manageable level, the problem is the banks never had 7B worth of money to lend in the short term. CNP got into trouble when they couldn't get their bridging loan refinanced on longer terms.

Now the banks are having to find other ways to increase their available cash for lending, ie. central banks came partially to the rescue a couple months ago by increasing money to the market in the US and AUS.

So if CNP can reduce the 7B down a bit, and if the credit market improves over the next few months (ie. banks having more money to lend out), then CNP will sort itself out.