Pension Agency Reports $22.8B Shortfall

[corporatemedia]

Pension Agency Reports $22.8B Shortfall By MARCY GORDON, AP Business Writer

WASHINGTON - The federal agency that insures the private pensions of 44 million workers said Tuesday that its deficit was $22.8 billion in 2005, as big airlines in bankruptcy dumped their pension liabilities.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. disclosed in its annual financial report that as of Sept. 30, it had $56.5 billion in assets to cover $79.2 billion in pension liabilities.

There has been an explosion in recent years in the number of big, ailing companies — especially in labor-heavy industries like airlines and steel — transferring their pension liabilities to the PBGC. With billions of dollars flying out of the agency's door, concern has been mounting in Congress and elsewhere over its financial footing.

"Unfortunately, the financial health of the PBGC is not improving," the agency's executive director, Bradley D. Belt, said in a statement. "The money available to pay benefits is eventually going to run out unless Congress enacts comprehensive pension reform to get plans better funded and provide the insurance program with additional resources."

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051115/ap_on_go_ot/pensions_shortfall

[TrogL]

1. When a company transfer its pension liabilities

...to the PBGC, does the existing pension fund (assuming it hasn't been looted :rofl:) go with it?

[MaineDem]

2. Really really really bad news

As a retiree on a pension this scares me more than I can say.

[SoCalDem]

3. the WORST p[art is that the PBGC "guarantees" only a portion

of what the employees have had stolen from them..

All those acquisitions & mergers & shenanigans have robbed the pension funds BLIND..

Years of "givebacks" at raise-time...for a guarantee of a better pension in old age, only guaranteed that the CEOs were stealing wages and work from employees whom they had NO plan to compensate later.

Stolen raises, stolen labor, stolen futures

and for some it IS life & death.. If you are counting on the retirement medical benefits that you willingly accepted less wages on the job for, well forget it..Most companies are just eliminating them with a stroke of a pen..