Word: pension
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...Congress gears up for hearings on Enron's $60 billion collapse, some Democrats are savoring a chance to investigate links between the company and its many G.O.P. friends in the White House and Congress. But the scandal may wind up tainting Democrats as well. Florida's state pension fund, which lost $325 million on Enron, is examining, as part of a broader inquiry, what role Frank Savage, a major Democratic donor, may have played in the state's loss. The fund's investments were directed by Alliance Capital Management, where Savage was a senior executive and chairman at the same...
...accounting for a global trading company like Enron is mind-numbingly complex. But it's crucial to learning how the company fell so far so fast, taking with it the jobs and pension savings of thousands of workers and inflicting losses on millions of individual investors. At the heart of Enron's demise was the creation of partnerships with shell companies, many with names like Chewco and JEDI, inspired by Star Wars characters. These shell companies, run by Enron executives who profited richly from them, allowed Enron to keep hundreds of millions of dollars in debt off its books...
...first honor-and-dignity issue in the person of Enron's former chief, longtime (and politically generous) Bush buddy Kenneth Lay, is fervently washing its hands of the whole mess. George W. Bush on Thursday announced that he would have the Treasury Department look into the whole corporate pension issue "to make sure we learn from the past." Oh, and that he hadn't talked to Lay in who knows how long...
...Lobbying is such an ugly word - so let's call it extortion. Why should George W. Bush even contemplate signing away his free-market beliefs right in the middle of a renewed push in Congress for fast-track authority and freer world trade? Because the Pension Benefit Guarantee Act already puts the government on the hook for at least $2 billion in pension costs if Big Steel goes under. Because steel-state congressmen might be persuaded to help Bush pass free-trade legislation, if their constituents are the exception to the rule. Because the steel states and the swing states...
...steel industry's problems are roughly the same as they were at the turn of the century when Carnegie Steel, Federal Steel and eight other steel companies formed the behemoth U.S. Steel: Excess capacity, slumping prices and profit margins squeezed by too much competition. (The pension problem came later.) That merger helped, but debt-ridden, none-too-efficient U.S. Steel steadily shed market share over the next century - especially to an explosion of foreign competitors after WWII - and today produces only marginally more steel than...