From the little I recall from HK in the cartel room, his problem is in liquidity, not negative equity, so we might be able to come to an agreement with him which is amicable for his depositors if he is unable to repay them within a reasonable amount of time (I have no idea if that's the case -- I'm speaking out of my ass a bit).
I'll admit that I don't know enough about the details to have much confidence in my conclusions. But I would just warn you that an equity problem often looks like a liquidity problem in the early stages.
For example, say you had people who borrowed money from you guys and then "invested" that money with Pirate planning to profit from the interest difference. Now that Pirate stopped making interest payments, they can't make interest payments either. This may appear to be a liquidity problem because your borrowers are either still hoping Pirate will pay back or just don't want to admit that they aren't going to pay back their loans. Once time, these non-paying loans will probably mostly fully default. If you make (or guarantee) loans to ease the liquidity problem, when those loans finally do fully default, there will probably be no money to pay you back.
A lot of people who thought they had little or no Pirate exposure may find out the truth is otherwise.
I don't think many would consider Pirate debt an asset when calculating equity, anymore, including those you may consider scammy morons. There are obvious, extraordinary conditions right now causing liquidity problems, and if that's not a relatively short-term problem, I'd have no interest in it. Pirate debt was particularly attractive because, if you needed to, you could withdraw at any time. That is in contrast with the majority of BTC-related offerings. AFAIK, nobody offers demand deposits, and many (including myself) do not even allow CDs to be called prior to the date of maturity, even if the depositor offers to forfeit interest (at least - that's policy... something voluntary can be worked out). Traditional angel funding (in the unlikely event anything significant's ever repaid) is probably the harshest to collect on since there generally aren't hard terms defining exactly what should happen, except when $10m+ companies with a brigade of lawyers are able to draft it up in a satisfactory manner. So, you might get a slip of paper (if lucky) saying you own 10% of Bullocks, LLC - aaaand... well - good luck turning that into anything useful. With regards to that, debt is a very attractive investment, because it has easy-to-define terms. I'm strolling way off-topic, though.
The point is (or... was) - those who kept reserve funds in Pirate lost a good chunk (if not practically all) liquid funds, and now need to start calling in loans or denying renewals. When working something out (Imsa's case is different [and relatively easy to solve] since he wasn't very involved with lending outside the loss on Pirate), we need to figure out how much they can call loans for, figure out who would be willing to honor a voluntary call, and start the slow work of making that happen, because, as you and I have both noted, there are lendees who covertly invested funds in Pirate and had no intent (possibly ability) of covering losses. We aren't going to say "Oh - you say you have 10kBTC in deposits, 15kBTC in loans. Well, okay, sounds like you're good to go - here's a few thousand coins until you're back on your feet!" It also requires HK consent to us butting in and asking him these questions... Idunno - I'm talking about him a lot and I've heard very little from him. I don't think he publishes his operation finances anywhere, either... I don't mean to speak for him -- Idunno his situation very well, so I don't mean to imply anything about him or his situation.