Guaranteed Loan

See: Surety Bond.

Mom signed the loan you took out for college. She's on the hook as well, now, for that $112,000 you'll incur, majoring in English at your snooty east coast liberal arts college. She's guaranteeing to the bank that you'll pay back the dough you owe. Don't do it and she loses her house. That's what guaranteeing is all about. See: Student Loan Crisis for the gory details.

And loan guarantees happen all over the place...not just in the starry-eyed dreamings of naive teenagers. Companies guarantee each other's loans somewhat regularly. Like...if a huge grocery distribution company wants a smaller supplier to scale up and produce 10x more dog food than it was previously producing, it might guarantee a loan to LittleDog, earmarked to triple the size of its factory. If LittleDog goes bust, then BigDog might just take over ownership of LittleDog, pay the bank the rest of the money owed by LittleDog and add their brand of dog food to BigDog's distribution prowess.

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