It means that, by someone's good graces, and in spite of your failures, the company you screwed up will be allowed to survive as an entity. It will not survive as an entity on your terms because your terms proved to be destructive. Changes will be made by whoever steps in and takes charge - in this case the government.

In the insurance-company-saved-by-AIG example I gave you yesterday, you are gd right there were changes in compensation, and a downsizing, and a reorganization.

Heck, the old company used to have a program where employees could purchase company stock at a discount. Even though the company was still listed as a separate entity on the NYSE, this program was replaced by one where employees could purchase AIG stock.

And you don't want to know about the extra levels of oversight and reporting that were added to our workload.