Terminally Ill

You're gonna die. Well, we all are. But if you're deemed to be terminally ill, then the doctors probably know within a month or two of when you'll hit the end of the cul de sac.

The term relats to businesses as well. When a company is terminally ill, it usually means that it can't pay its debts; its operations are declining; it has no prayer of getting out of the hole, so the creditors are just trying to get back as much of their loans as possible, lick their wounds, and move on to another borrower...in hopes that the terminally ill company's failings didn't make lenders loath to take risks on new companies down the line.