Unless she took out the loan using personal collateral, she still isn't taking anymore personal risk than an employee. Most businesses are LLC's or corporations that protect personal assets if the business goes belly up. So the only assets on the line are the assets owned by the business. In the case of your wife's loan, I suspect it's the businesses building that is collateral, not her pesonal assets like your family home. But I think the point of brycejones comment was the fact that these execuatives, who are losing nothing other than their job, tend to fight and many times recievce Millions in bonuses during a bankruptcy, while the standard employees, who also lost their jobs, never see their wages owed. Translation: execuatives get a big payday for runnig a business into the ground while the actual workers get a big "fuck you"!