@1xhu Exactly, and by the way, there isn't a whole lot left in the way of assets to sell. Just have to unload Kenmore, DieHard, SYW, A&E Home Service and a few other intellectual property assets and then we are done. The liquidation of the real estate assets are pretty much done besides the DCs, the headquarter offices in Hoffman and maybe a handful of stores, though the vast majority of stores with any appreciable value--the prime properties in a good location in a busy mall or booming city--were cherry picked and sold off long ago.
If you want to know why the "good" stores close and the poor-performing stores get to stay around, this is why. Most of the good performing stores only did well because of the quality of their location. If the location is good, it's valuable on the market, and so it gets sold. The only thing is that the situation becomes very rocky when the store base is made up of marginal performing stores now that the top performing stores were mostly sold off in the past. The loans sustain the operations, albeit insufficiently, and in return, Eddie is moved up the creditor food chain.
Most of the stores that remain today are properties that Eddie more or less would be willing to sacrifice in bankruptcy and/or to fund the pension (ring-fenced properties). It's just not worth the bother to sell those stores since they are usually stuck in dying malls or stagnant towns and are basically worthless to any other retailer or, for that matter, commercial real estate investors. Those will be sold off during bankruptcy for pennies on the dollar.
The assets are the only reason Eddie is granting these loans -- to keep it alive long enough to strip any assets of appreciable value.