Word: pbgc
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TIME's promotion of a pension-based retirement system scares me. Private pension plans are only as good as the insurer that backs them--in many cases the federally run Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). The PBGC's future solvency, like Social Security's, is dubious at best. Say what you will about market-based retirement vehicles, but it will be a cold day in hell before I relinquish the security of my nest egg to a government with an uncanny ability to mismanage everything...
...protection a month ago, citing the need to restructure $3.6 billion in debt. Meanwhile, Delphi, a former GM subsidiary based in Troy, Mich., and that automaker's biggest parts supplier, emerged from bankruptcy protection in June after unloading $6.2 billion in pension liabilities on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC), a U.S. government agency whose job is to protect private pension plans. (See the 50 worst cars of all time...
...reality, the deficits in many cases are worse than the published data suggest, which becomes evident when bankrupt corporations dump their pension plans on the PBGC. Time after time, the agency has discovered, the gap between retirement holdings and pensions owed was much wider than the companies reported to stockholders or employees. Thus LTV Corp., the giant Cleveland steelmaker, reported that its plan for hourly workers was about 80% funded, but when it was turned over to the PBGC, there were assets to cover only 52% of benefits--a shortfall of $1.6 billion to be assumed by the agency...
...PBGC lists of deadbeat pension funds served another purpose. They were an early-warning sign of companies in trouble--a sign often ignored or denied by the companies themselves. "Somehow, if companies are making progress toward an objective that's consistent with [the PBGC's], then I think it's counterproductive to be exposed on this public listing," complained Gary Millenbruch, executive vice president of Bethlehem Steel, a perennial favorite...
Time proved Millenbruch wrong. The early warnings about Bethlehem's pension liabilities turned out to be right on target. Bethlehem Steel eventually filed for bankruptcy, and the PBGC took over its pension plans--which were short $3.7 billion. The company, once America's second largest steelmaker, no longer exists. In the Top 50 pension deadbeats of 1990, the PBGC reported that the funds of Pan Am Corp., operator of what was once the premier global airline, had only one-third of the assets needed to pay its promised pensions. Pan Am does not exist today...