Word: pensions
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...there's any doubt America faces its gravest financial crisis in decades, consider this sobering evidence: Pension plans for some of the 1,500 largest U.S. companies have lost about $280 billion so far this year...
...November alone, pension plans lost about $130 billion, marking the second consecutive month of record declines, according to a new report from Mercer, the financial consulting firm. The companies Mercer studied - those in the Standard & Poor's 1,500 index, which includes household names like 3M and Coca Cola - reported their pension plans ended 2007 with a $60 billion surplus. So the swiftness of this year's decline is astonishing. (Read "Is It OK to Pray for Your...
Mercer analysts attribute the developments mainly to the collapse of the equity market, in which many U.S. pension plans are invested. But pension funds are being hit on the other side of their balance sheet as well, as declining yields on Treasury bonds swell the size of their pension fund liabilities...
...pension crisis will likely aggravate an already bleak financial outlook for many companies, and may stimulate a debate about retirement policy in this country. Already, President-elect Barack Obama has moved swiftly to address the worsening economic and financial crisis. Now, a key question is how, or if, President-elect Obama delivers on his campaign proposal to require companies that don't offer employee retirement plans to enroll workers in a direct-deposit IRA account, which may help many low- and middle-income people participate in retirement programs for the first time. "You can't have companies going from...
...last year, the funded status of the pension plans Mercer analyzed has fallen from an estimated 104% (a surplus) to 80% (a deficit). Now, companies are scrambling to determine how to make up the difference. There are two key ways to do that, with the easiest being a stock market recovery. But there's no telling when that will happen...