Second, the adverse impact on employees clearly extends to the impact of these corporate failures on employee pension funds, an impact that has led many workers to question the security of their retirement. A quick look at the numbers demonstrates how badly public pension funds have been hit.

      It is reported that 21 States have combined losses of just under $2 billion from their WorldCom investments. The California public retirement system reported a loss of $565 million. And the numbers go on from there. I won't cite them all, but all across the country there are tremendous losses being incurred. It is said that the loss of value of both WorldCom and Enron has cost public State pension funds $2.7 billion.

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/refs/2002-07-25-sarbanes.html

Additional reading....

http://www.americanbenefitscouncil.org/newsroom/pr99-21.cfm

http://www.cwa-union.org/news/CWANewsDisplay.asp?id=2

The proposal would require a five-year "hold harmless" period for current employees following a cash balance conversion, would ban benefit "wear-away" after a cash balance conversion, and would clarify the legal status of cash balance plans and other hybrid plans. The withdrawn regulations were originally proposed in December, 2002 and would have applied statutory age-discrimination rules to cash balance plans and conversions. Treasury and IRS will not publish new age-discrimination guidance while cash balance plans are being considered by Congress.

http://www.fpanet.org/member/membership/fpatw/june_28_2004.cfm

Another favorite accounting trick that has to go: the use of overfunded pension plans to boost income. Standard & Poor's, in its newly formulated "core earnings'' measure, excludes pension income altogether, while including any pension costs.

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/archives/000133.html

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When one considers so-called Pension Protection Acts, they should be certain they are not confusing different acts all with the same or similar sounding names.

The Pension Protection Act of 05 is merely proposed....

Other acts are quite different.

If one has questions about which specifics are included in each of the many forms, they shouldn't assume that an offhand reference such as."" Pension Protection ACT or some such doublespeak"", necessarily means one specific act.

A prudent assumption would recognize that the reference is made in context of the discussion about naming an act does not define what is in the body of the legislation.

Just as the Clear Sky legislation was anything but legislation to attain clearer skies.

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More wild speculation ?

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