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[Commentary] © 2003 Philip Hyde, The Timesizing Wire™, Box 622 Cambridge MA 02143 USA (617) 623-8080

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Eroding Retirement, July-September/2003

9/25/2003   eroding retirement, as documented in the Wall Street Journal & NY Times -

• FASB will review rules, pointer summary (to A6), WSJ, front page.
  ...on how firms with cash-balance pension plans measure benefit obligations.
  [Oh-oh. Main article -]
  Cash-balance-plan accounting could be overhauled by FASB [Financial Accounting Standards Board], by Arden Dale, Dow Jones via WSJ, A6.
  ...Hundreds of large employers have adopted the plans, which usually save companies money by cutting pensions for older workers and indirectly increase earnings by cutting pension liabilities....

1. Retirement recedes, pointer summary (to D1), WSJ, D1.
   Many older workers plan to stop working only in their 70s, or in some cases their 80s, largely because of deep nest-egg losses. Job data begin to reflect the study's findings.
   Many older workers to delay retirement until after age 70, by Kelly Greene, WSJ, D2.
   [Hey, at least the Wall Street Journal is not here pretending that older workers are choosing to delay retirement till after 70! But it gets worse -]
   Many older workers are planning to push their final retirement dates into their 70s, or in some cases their 80s [our italics], according to a new...survey [of 2,001 workers aged 50-70]...to be released today...conducted for AARP [American Assoc. of Retired Persons], a DC advocacy group for people aged 50 and older.
   [There you have it. The backside of the American Dream, American retirement, has become the stark reality of dying on the job or dialing 800-KEVORKIAN.]
   The findings quantify a significant shift in older Americans' retirement goals ["goals"? B.S! - "pressures" more like!], resulting from the combination of
   • the stock-market downturn,
   • historically low interest rates on conservative investments favored [favored shmavored - NEEDED] by retirees,
   • and widespread cutbacks in retiree health benefits.
   The study looked at two groups...
   1. "preretirees," or workers who haven't retired [15% of sample];
   2. and "working retirees" [85%], which includes people who remained in the workforce after stepping down from a job [and] could include someone who immediately started a consulting business [ie: forced self-employment] or someone who returned to work later.
   45% of the combined groups said they expect to work into their 70s or beyond, with 27% expecting to quit sometime before age 80, and 18% planning to work after that.
   The numbers are even higher among preretirees, with 34% expecting to work into their 70s, and 23% expecting to keep at it into their 80s.
   [This proves that turning from workweek to worklife capping last century - blocking workweek capping at the 30-hour level in 1933 and dropping workweek cutting at the 40-hour level after 1940 - was unsustainable and a huge mistake - because it's at odds with a fundamental human (and all-species?) goal = to push back death. Also, it lays unsustainable and unrealistic open-ended costs on the workforce, a kind of blank-check parasitism, that should be converted to and merged with regular ongoing temporary disability as quickly as possible.]
   ..."This survey documents a new realism among working people," said John Rother, AARP's director of policy & strategy. "We're no longer getting people being able to retire at 50 based on unrealistic stock-market returns."
   [A changed reality, due to the gradual dismantling of the myriad centrifuge mechanisms on the national income that has happened since the end of World War II in 1945, or put another way, due to the increasing stinginess and unwillingness to share - of the upper income brackets. This is the real basis of the so-called business cycle, which is not an automatic cycle at all, because there's no automatic upturn, because there's no unforced switch back to generosity and sharing among the upper income brackets. In 1917-18 and 1941-45, it was WAR that pressured the upper brackets to ease their paranoid grip on their trillions of $$$,$$$,$$$,$$$,$$$, and it will be much vaster war that does it next time - UNLESS we switch to the intelligent alternative, Timesizing, which creates the same kind of marketforce-harnessing labor shortage as war, but does it by rationing/sharing worktime per person instead of killing and maiming vast segments of the workforce.]
   ..\.."We've never seen people say they want to work until they're 75 years old," said Jeff Love, AARP's research director.
   In the past, even people planning to work past traditional retirement age pictured themselves calling it quits by the time they turned 70. But now, people have "lost so much money in their 401Ks, it may be that they're making a projection based on how long it will take to replace those assets," Mr. Love said.
   ["Replace those assets" in your 70s and 80s? - who's he kidding?]
   ...The preretirees surveyed...anticipate barriers to the work they would like to spend their later years doing, the survey found. The top obstacle they expect to face is health problems (35%), which are "the dirty little secret" marring many older workers' goals [ie: needs], Mr. Love said. "Everyone [needs] to work longer, but what if they can't?"
   Other expected barriers, named by 33% of workers apiece, were the lack of money needed to start a business and physical demands of the work..\..
   The current research, conducted April 9 through June 5 [and] done by marketing-research company RoperASW, New York, has a 3% sampling error....
   The need for money was named as the primary motivation for older workers' decision to stay on the job, with 22% of people who haven't retired giving it as their top reason for staying of the job, along with 35% of people working in retirement.
   [And in terms of the recent additions to this whole number of delayed retirees, the remaining 78% and 65% are just putting a happy face on it all, figuring they can't do anything about it so they might as well make the best of it.]
   Federal job numbers are beginning to reflect the study's findings. As of Aug. 31, 4.8m people aged 45 and older were in the U.S. workforce, up 8% from 4.4m in March 2001, when the most recent [officially admitted] recession started, according to the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics].
   [So on the very same day that we get our first story about second family-wage-earners being driven out of the increasingly harsh, shrinking and competitive job market (see "2-income famlies decline - Economists blame the drop on rising unemployment," on our Downsizing page today, 9/23/2003 first uncounted), we get a current-bucking story of desperate elderly people being driven back in. And all because we aren't smart enough to regard the time dimension as a control variable that we can easily use to SHARE THE VANISHING WORK. The shorter-hours imperative tightens its vise on our stupid resistant heads and begins to shake them. We have vast assembly lines of vast miraculous technology today. Not only should we all be living in heaven, not only CAN we all be living in heaven, but we damn well MUST start living in the heaven of more free time and more market-response-to-labor-shortage income - or the mild hell that we're now living in will get worse, much worse.]
   Another key finding: Though the bulk of older workers plan to stay in their current professions, 27% expect to do something entirely different, with 16% planning to work for themselves or start their own business. Of those planning to work for hire, 6% are considering teaching.
   [So, a devastating change, but necessary for sustainability, and greatly eased by the levels of workweek we should be at today - probably somewhere between 15 and 25 hours a week considering we should have passed the 30-hour workweek in 1933 SEVENTY YEARS AGO - and eased also by simply folding end-of-life disability in with regular disability, since we can seldom be 100% sure that a given disability is the slip to the Big Sleep.]
   [Another easing idea, same WSJ section -]
   Putting toddlers in a nursing home - Daycare programs for young and old grow in popularity, but kids' germs are a worry, WSJ, D1.
   [Hey, as long as they could opt out when they were tired, most old people would LOVE having little kids around, and if they caught something and wafted more swiftly into eternity, who cares? It'd be worth it. Better swift wth happy memories of toddlers, than slow, forgotten and alone.]

2. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. - Labor contract will provide cost savings of $1.15B, WSJ, A17.
   ...Goodyear said it can get $700m in cost avoidance. That includes trimming employee medical and pension costs....
   [So, pension and benefit erosion.]

• House leaders plan, pointer blurb (to A7), WSJ, front page.
  ...to introduce a streamlined pension bill, focusing solely on big contributions companies are forced to make.
  [main story -]
  Bill is to propose narrow changes to pension rules - With a broad overhaul unlikely to advance, the [GOP-dominated] House is focusing solely on funding rules, WSJ, A7.
  [Relentless pressure to restore the world of Warren Harding, in any increments possible and/or necessary.]

1. Push for broad pension change is losing steam in Congress - Employers won't see major relief to help ease burden of nest-egg [= traditional fixed-benefit] funds, WSJ, D5.
   [And why should they? Their fathers managed them quite well. But this Journal story seems partially contradicted by a Times story -]
   Senate panel expected to vote on bill to aid pension plans, by Mary Walsh, NYT, C1.
   The Senate Finance Committee is expected to vote tomorrow on a bill that would offer relief [only] to severely troubled pension plans - including those at airlines - and would radically change the way companies calculate their pensions. ...But the bill contains one paragraph that would exempt...for 3 years..\..most companies [not just airlines] from the large special pension contributions that are required when a plan falls below a certain financial standard. ...[The] break...may have been included [to] mak[e] the bill's tougher provisions more palatable to business [or] to deflect criticism that the bill is a form of financial aid for a single industry [eg: airlines]....
   [Why worry about that now after sending billions in aid to airlines the last two years - and now we're sinking a billion a week into Iraq?!]

2. Treasury to issue guides on [calculating] cash-balance payouts - According to pension law, employees must be given the full value of their pensions, which in some cases is higher than the account balance because of continued interest credit, WSJ, D5.
   [Isn't this exactly what the Treasury has recently been forbidden to do? See 9/10 #2 below.]
   [Followup -]
   Treasury may delay pension rules, 10/16/2003 WSJ, A6.

3. Retirees fear losing drug benefits, pointer digest (to A1). NYT, C1.
   As Congress works on legislation to cover prescription drugs under Medicare, lawmakers have been deluged with complaints from retirees who fear losing benefits they already have from former employers.
   [main story]
   Retirees alarmed at threat of cuts in drug benefits - Issue for Medicare bill - Congress weighs giving tax credits to employers who uphold coverage levels, NYT, front page.
   [and related Journal article -]
   Behind Medicare's decisions, an invisible web of gatekeepers - Shot in the spine, Mr. Erringer suddenly lost coverage for some pain medicine, by Laurie McGinley, WSJ, front page.
   [because detailed decision-making has been farmed out to a patchwork of insurance companies, w]hose decisions can vary widely from region to region....
   [Another blow to once-strong American consumer markets and another nail in America's coffin. When and how did this happen?]
   The denials were based on a new "local medical review policy" - one of the most contentious features of the Medicare system....
   [WSJ.com today tells you how to appeal if Medicare denies coverage for your outpatient service or equipment.]

4. Some pension plans ditch cautious strategies, by Silvia Ascarelli & David Reilly, WSJ, C13.
   [such as Siemens 14.8B-euro plan swinging between bonds and stocks, successfully, or the Dutch govt's 142B-euro Stichtung Pensionsfonds' intention to go into hedgefunds.]
   ...The 100 largest listed companies in the U.K. had a combined pension deficit of £55B ($88.07B) at midyear.
   ...In the U.S...GM, e.g., is short $19B to pay its U.S. pensions, while the automotive industry overall faces a pension gap of about $60B....

5. Wisconsin: Abuse of elderly increases, by Jo Napolitano, NYT, A15.
   15%...probably because of better reporting and a growing population of old people.... 3,721 reports...in 2002, up from 3,223 in 2001....

1. Medicare negotiators agreed, pointer blurb (to D9), WSJ, front page.
   ...to a two-year, $1.2B boost in Medicare payments for over 100 treatments given on an outpatient basis in hospitals. Biotech companies had lobbied for the change.
   [Main story's headline -]
   Medicare payments to be boosted - In boon to biotech industry, lawmakers agree to cover new outpatient drugs - The industry said the payment for its higih-tech products had been set too low, WSJ, D1.

2. The House passed, pointer blurb (to A3 {& C1, see #3 below}), WSJ, front page.
   ...an amendment that could prevent the Treasury from issuing final regulations on cash-balance pension plans.
   [Main story's headline -]
   House acts to derail pension rules - Amendment may prevent cash-balance regulations proposed by the Treasury, WSJ, A3.
   [And the Times' version -]
   House blocks Treasury work on pensions, by Mary Walsh, NYT, C3.
   ...citing concerns that the rules might be used by companies intent on changing their pension plans in ways that would strip older workers of benefits. The House vote came after weeks of intensive lobbying on pensions that took a new turn yesterday with an unusual full-page advertisement in The New York Times warning that the House bill could help to "destroy America's pension system." The ad was placed by several business organizations....
   The court decision was hailed by older workers and their advocates, [but] IBM has said it would appeal.... In July, a federal court ruled that IBM had illegally discriminated against its older workers when it changed to a cash-balance pension plan in the 1990s. The decision surprised and disturbed many companies because the judge's reasoning seemed to suggest that virtually all cash-balance pension plans illegally discriminate, no matter how carefully companies design them.
   [Hmm, IBM used to be a good company for employees. Now it's another one, like Polaroid and HP, gone bad. How do CEOs and business schools expect to have a consumer base and markets left if they keep weakening the money centrifuges throughout the economy, so that more and more of the national income defaults upward into the top brackets where it's too tightly packed to be spent? If CEOs are the only ones in the economy who have financial security, their financial security won't be worth a damn.]
   "Clearly, the Treasury Dept. is intent on pushing these illegal regulations," said Rep. Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent who introduced the bill....
   [And here's that anti-bill ad -]
   Don't destroy America's pension system. Vote "no" on the Sanders amendment to HR 2989, full-page ad, 9/9/2003 NYT, C5.
   The Sanders amendment to the Treasury appropriations bill threatens to: outlaw vast numbers of pension plans in the country...[blah blah blah]
   [Never mind that countless companies have been looting and skimping their pension plans outrageously, same as the Federal Gov't that now irresponsibly counts the Social Security fund in with its regular budget to misleadingly diminish its debt, despite the separate escrow and earmarking, which now of course is weakened. The sponsors of this ad are listed as -]
   ERISA Industry Committee
   National Assoc. of Mfrs
   American Benefits Council
   The Business Roundtable
   Coalition to Preserve the Defined Benefit System [this is as honest as would be an oil companies' Coalition to Preserve the Ecology of Oilfields & Pipeline Easements]
   Advertisement paid for by ERISA Industry Committee.
   [Lord God, employees have almost no advocates any more. How in the world did Bernie Sanders get this bill to pass by 258 to 160?! He's a magician.]

3. A small, small pension world, pointer blurb (to C1), WSJ, front page.
   This fall, key pension regulation and legislation are likely. How will the close ties between regulators and lobbyists affect the results?
   [Probably badly. Here's another pointer in a related story -]
   Ties that bind? [or blind?], pointer blurb (to C1), WSJ, A3.
   Many Americans' retirements could hinge partly on links between pension regulators and lobbyists - relationships social as well as professional....
   [Main story's headline -]
   Many ties link pension lobby to regulators, WSJ, C1.

1. [first the bad news -]
   To cut costs, Lucent changes benefits for retirees, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...The telephone equipment maker [is] changing the health benefits of retirees to save $75m a year..\.. Lucent Technologies [will] stop reimbursing mangement retirees and their dependents for the cost of some Medicare premiums in 2004. The company, based in Murray Hill NJ, will no longer pay for dental coverage of those retirees, according to a filing with the SEC....

2. [then some good news, well, sort of, or maybe not -]
   Fewer people on Medicare are dropped by H.M.O.'s, by Robert Pear, NYT, A21.
   WASHINGTON...- The exodus of HMOs from Medicare, a trend that has alarmed elderly people and members of Congress since 1999, will slow to a trickle next year, the industry said [yester]day.
   [Why is that? Because there aren't any left in?]
   Karen Ignagni, president of the American Assoc. of Health Plans, the lobby for HMOs and other private plans, said they would drop [only!] 39,000 Medicare beneficiaries next year. By contrast, health plans dropped 2.4m beneficiaries from 1999 to 2003.
   [If we're talking 99-03 inclusive, that's 2.4m/5= avg. 480,000/yr or exclusive, 2.4m/4= avg. 600,000/yr. In any case, it's time to move back to Canada!]
   Some HMOs have pulled [completely] out of Medicare, while others have curtailed participation by withdrawing from specific counties.
   [Nasty!]
   ...40m people [are] enrolled in Medicare..\.. Abour 4.6m...or 11.5%...are in HMOs which have historically provided drug benefits and preventive care not available in the traditional fee-for-service program. The number of people in such private plans reached a peak of 6.3m, or 16%...in late 1999....
   [Another deterioration to date from the non-election of Bush.]

• Warning of pension-plan shortfall raises pressure for financial fix, by John McKinnon, WSJ, front page.
  The government agency that insures 44m workers' retirement benefits...Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. [PBGC]...established in 1974 to pay benefits to workers whose pension plans go bust
  [thus establishing a huge blank check on the taxpayer that it only took crowds of CEOs 20-25 years to find]
  ..\..said the nation's pension system is in worse financial shape than previously believed, a politically charged warning at a time when economic uncertainty, unemployment and rising fears about the loss of manufacturing jobs [to] overseas already are stoking debate in Washington.
  It raises the prospect[s -]
  • that companies could be forced to contribute more to the government insurance plan,
  • that benefits to retirees could be reduced
  • and even that taxpayers ultimately could have to bail out the pension-guarantee program....
  PBGC...estimated that by the end of this month, financially troubled companies, or those with below investment-grade credit ratings, will have pension plans whose promises exceed their assets by $80 billion. ..\..Some experts say the agency is overstating the problem in order to force companies to pay it higher premiums.
  [Overstating? Not likely. It's not that hard to estimate to the end of the current month. Would they believe it if it was just to the end of the current week? Probably not. The job of these "experts" is evidently to whitewash CEO incompetence &/or competent looting, whatever its cost.]
  ...The agency's previous estimate for these companies'...level of underfunding was [only] $35B. Overall, the agency says, all private employer pension plans are $400 billion short of assets needed to keep promises they've made....

• Can you rely on Social Security?, by Andrew Tobias, Parade mag, 6.
  ...The problem
  Today, 29m retirees [compare 5.7m disabled, 2.2m prisoners & 0.6m homeless] receive an average of $900 a month from Social Security [SS]. For nearly 2/3 of them, it represents more than half their income. For 20%, it represents all their income.
  ..\..In 1935, when the Social Security Act was signed, the life expectancy of a 65-year-old retiree was not quite 12½ years. Now it's more like 17½.
  ...In 1960 there were 5 workers to help support each beneficiary. Today, as we live longer and family sizes have shrunk, there are only 3.4 workers per beneficiary, headed to 2.1 in the year 2030....
  [Tobias, like everyone else on this issue, forgets the key factor of technology - automation, robotics, cybernetics, and good ol' mechanization allow today's 3.4 workers to produce as much as 6 or 7 or more workers in 1960. By 2030, 2.1 workers will be producing as much as 10 or 11 or more workers in 1960. This argument is a scare tactic on the part of neo-cons to con people into cutting benefits and/or raising the retirement age, as they cut taxes, which brings us to Tobias' "solutions" -]
  ...The solution
  There are only three ways to make the numbers work, all terrible: raise taxes, cut benefits or raise the retirement age.
  1. Raise the SS tax. ...The already hefty payroll tax rate [is] 6.2% each from you and your employer, plus a further 1.45% each for Medicare [so] instead...remov[e] the income ceiling on which the tax is levied - currently $87,000 and set...the rate on that "extra" income at something modest, like 1.5%....
     [So he's suggesting a lower rate on higher income? Bizarre. Richboys like Steve Forbes are always bellyaching about the graduated income tax and pushing flat taxes, but the SS tax is a flat tax BUT ONLY UP TO $87,000! And richboy Tobias wants a lower rate above that point! These people are sooo self-obsessed. It's the Chesterton trap.]
  2. Raise the retirement age....
     [Why not cut the crap, use Timesizing to make sure there's a huge diversity and availability of well-paying shorter-hours jobs, and then fold "retirement" in with disability aka Workers' Comp?!]
  3. Cut benefits....
     [Sure, cut benefits entirely for the wealthy - paying them SS is just stupid. "Means Testing"? Long overdue. Cut benefits for everyone and you're looking at a big drop in consumption alias effective demand alias MARKETS. Cut benefits for the wealthy and squeal though they will, their spending patterns won't alter an iota.]
  ...Visit *ssa.gov to find out what your SS income would be if you retired today.

1. Blue-state pols are emptying their own states, by Daniel Henninger, WSJ, A8.
   ...It is now economically irrational for a middle-class person to retire in New York City....
   [So they're retiring to FL, AZ, NV, NC....]

2. World watch -...Asia/Pacific -...Briefly, WSJ, A6.
   The Singapore government, aiming to lower business costs and save jobs, cut employer contributions to employee pension funds to 13% of salaries from 16%. The reduction is part of an effort to 'reform' [our quotes] the state-run pension system and spur investment.
   [So who's going to pay the 3% difference now, employees? Here again, we see the self-defeating policy of trying to save jobs by favoring investors over employee-consumers. Investment is of no use if the production available for it to invest in has no matching consumption. Investors routinely ruin their own base economies by assuming "it's all about them."]

• China gets bumpy ride following California's lead, pointer blurb (to C1), WSJ, front page.
  [Guess so. Why would anyone want to follow California's lead??]
  Two months ago, China began pumping pension-fund money into its stock markets [foolish!], hoping to supplement revenue. Early returns aren't encouraging.

• A high quality of life, a strained pension plan, by Eric Sylvers, NYT, W1.
  Milan... - Amelia Antonetti retired 9 months ago after 31 years as a highschool teacher and now spends her days looking after her husband and 3 grown children. All the while, Mrs. Antonetti, 56, collects 90% of her last salary and will do so for the rest of her life.
  The laws that let Mrs. Antonetti retire when many countries would still consider her to be of working age have helped make Italy's quality of life among the highest in the world. Those same laws are stretching the country's pension system to the limit as the government struggles to pay its obligations to a rapidly aging population.
  [If we want to continue our progress toward longer and longer life, we must switch worktime controls from a basic unit of the worklife to a basic unit of the workweek. In short, we entirely replace the unlimited permanent retirement concept entirely with the concept of temporary rehabilitating disability, and we get busy developing the technological support for that concept. If a quadriplegic like Steven Hawken can be made self-supporting and majorly contributing by technology, almost anyone can.]
  "I'm very happy I retired because I was tired, but now I'm worried about my children," said Mrs. Antonetti, who taught Italian literature in the northern Italian town of Parma. "They are going to have to work until they are well past 60, and then are there going to be any pensions for them when they get there?..."
  ...Analysts say that if Italy - which spends about 14% of its GDP on pensions, compared with an EU average of 10% - is to stave off a financial collapse of the pension system, far-reaching change [i]s needed.... In Italy, workers with 35 years on the job can retire if they are at least 57. Before...1995, there was no age requirement, and some government workers were eligible to retire after as little as 15 years on the job. Government employees, like Mrs. Antonetti, will not have to meet the minimum-age requirement until next year [hence her age, a mere 56]..\..
  [Clearly a timesizing system based on the worklife unit, and including on the other end, more and more prolonged 'education.']
  To confront the pension problem, Italy can raise the minimum retirement age [ultimately inevitable, combined with a lowering of the workweek], or create more jobs [impossible in the age of robotics] and permit more immigration....
  [The current fashion for "population communism" runs counter to the need for each national constituency to move toward steady-state population policies, favors global population irresponsibility, and devalues ecological sustainability. Frequently held by "conservatives," it also runs strangely counter to their professed belief in private property as an incentive to responsibile stewardship. But then look at the kind of population naivete common in the media today -]
  Not only does Italy have a growing number of early retirees, the country also has a stagnant birth rate.
  ["Stagnant"? How about "sustainable" or "equilibrium" or "steady-state"? The anti-ecological assumptions behind this choice of words stem from our obsolete growth-dependent economics, that does not distinguish between doing more with more and doing more with less, and has not yet made the switch from quantity of life to quality of life.]
  At 1.3 babies per woman, the [birth] rate is half that of 30 years ago and is among the lowest in the world. Italy's population has hovered around 58m people for 20 years, and the government forecasts it will fall to 53m by 2050....
  [Therein Italy is the envy of the world - any parts of it with any common sense anyway - and particularly China and India, regardless of today's obsessive-growth fashion that has long outlived its usefulness and practicality.]
  That trend, which will shift the ratio of older to younger people, spells trouble for a system like Italy's [or the USA's!], where today's workers pay the pensions of older generations.
  [Not in the robotics age, and not if today's workers are truly paid the value of their technology-multiplied output, instead of keeping them a surplus commodity so that multiplied value can be funneled into the top income brackets, where it is lost to any purpose but orphan investment - investing power so concentrated that it suctions the markets away from the tech-accelerated productivity it hopes at least to maintain its value in.]
  Italy's problem is made more acute by the fact that only 55% of Italians aged 15 to 64 work, compared with an EU average of 64%....
  [What's the problem? Fifty years ago when one wage-earner could support the whole family, probably at most 45% of Italians and Americans and citizens of every other advanced economy worked. This commentator and his buds will consider ANY aspect problematic but the distribution and over-concentration aspect - which is totally taboo and unmentionable in today's consolidated "two-guy media" - two short-sighted rich guys, as you might imagine. Check out who they focus on as having 'special privileges', for example -]
  The system is also strained by the special privileges enjoyed by [the few thousand super-wealthy? - no] some state workers, like employees of Sicily's regional government who can retire after 25 years on the job if they are male and after 20 years if they are female....
  [Guess some wealthy people won't be happy till everyone else is dirt poor, but then, what are they going to invest in? There will be no markets.]
  Private-sector employees in France must work for 40 years before they can retire. A law passed last month will push that to 42 in 2020 and will make government employees, who can now retire after 37 years of work subject to the [same] 40-year minimum beginning in 2008.
  [The whole problem that today's fixed-workweek economics has with making retirees or welfare people work more is - no jobs. This is no problem for tomorrow's fluctuating-workweek economics, aka worktime economics, because it simply smoothly and automatically shares the vanishing work. The most market-oriented and gradual design for tomorrow's fluctuating-workweek economics is Timesizing, particularly in its Fourth Phase. This is what Walter Reuther called, in 1964, "flexible adjustment of the workweek" - against unemployment.]
  Germany is considering a proposal that would raise the retirement age for some workers to 67 from 65....
  [Compare today's first-section article -]
  Italian puzzle: The land that doesn't seem to fit, by Frank Bruni, NYT, A4.
  [Or as Robbie Burns put it, "All the world's quare but thou & I, and even th'art a bit quare." Party-line neo-con US media seem to be having more and more trouble with that, even though in this case, the article slams Italy for its intertwining of business and politics, as if Cheney's USA is not so afflicted.]

• Northwest Airlines can use stock of unit to fund retirement plans, by Schultz & Carey, WSJ, front page.
  ...permission from the [Bush] Labor Dept. to contribute...the difficult-to-value stock of Pinnacle Airlines Corp., a majority-owned regional Northwest affiliate..\..instead of cash....
  [In the immortal words of the Teletubbies, "Oh-oh."]

1. No side effects, by Jackie Calmes, WSJ, A4.
   Business coalition [Employers' Coalition on Medicare] seeks to calm fears that a new Medicare drug benefit would prompt employers to drop retirees' coverage.... A congressional analysis [says] that 1/3 of retirees would lose better benefits....

2. Tyco International Ltd. - Labor Dept. subpoenas records on retirement plans, Dow Jones via WSJ, B7.
   [oh oh]

• Pension plans face risk, pointer blurb (to C1), NYT, front page.
  A rush by individuals to pull [maximum lumpsum] cash out of weakened pension plans represents a hidden risk. In the worst case, these plans could fail.
  [indicated story -]
  A lump-sum threat to pension funds, by Mary Walsh, NYT, C1.
  ...Already on edge after US Air pilots\ lost thousands of dollars of benefits and the ability to take their money as a single payment..\..when the government took over the[ir] ailing pension plan...earlier this year..., pilots at Delta...learned that their company was...putting aside tens of millions of dollars to fully fund a retirement trust for dozens of top executives [while] the Delta pilots['] pension fund [is] in the red. "One of my friends called me up and said: '...These people could just bankrupt the company and [abandon] us...' " recalled Capt. Dave Davis. [So] he told Delta that he would retire on Sept. 1...three years early, and take as much of his pension as possible in cash immediately. ...Pilots at American Airlines are also "faced with the decision, Is it best for them to cut and run or not?" said Stan Spiewak, a financial planner...who specializes in advising pilots who work for American.
  [Hey, the executives clearly think it's best to cut and run cuz they do it all the time. It's like a run on the banks a la early 1930s -]
  ...A rush by individuals to pull cash out of a weakened fund...can work like a bank run, draining so many assets that the plan's solvency [is] threatened....

1. Auto maker gives $3B to retiree healthcare fund, Dow Jones via WSJ, D5.
   ...At the end of last lyear, General Motors' pensions were underfunded by $19.2B, with an obligation of $80.1B. Paying retiree benefits particularly is a challenge for GM, because the company now has two retired employees for every worker.
   [but probably two robots for every retired employee. False problem.]

2. Pressured by union, Delta cancels payment to special [executive] pension plan, by Evan Perez, WSJ, front page.
   Seeking to end a "divisive debate regarding executive compensation" at the financially struggling carrier...the nation's No.3 airline, behind \American and United,\ will stop funding a special bankruptcy-proof pension program for executives and will cut back some management bonuses....
   [Strange are the employer excesses when fixed-workweek economics, by responding to technology with downsizing, not timesizing, surpluses and disempowers employees, and leaves employers in the bullies' role, unchecked by anyone who can keep them even half human.]

• [and stretching to put a positive face on it -]
  Guides to an anything-but-staid retirement, by Fred Brock, NYT, 3:9.
  There's little question that the traditional concept of retirement - aka being on vacation for the rest of your life - is rapidlyl changing to reflect the more proactive [or desperate] mindset of the babyboomers, as well as the economic realities [ie: man-made results of cumulative dismantlings of $centrifuge mechanisms] and paltry savings.
  Tomorrow's retirees [if any] are going to be anything but on a permanent holiday, and 2 recent books aim to provide some emotional and psychological guidance for a time of life that for many may become knows as a postwork career.
  [In this context, Japan's now-abandoned "lifetime employment", and Lincoln Electric's "lifetime guarantee of employment", are lookin' better and better. (The difference is that Lincoln Electric implemented timesizing in 1959 while Japan is still struggling to discover it.) We'll list the books but here's hoping the so-called "emotional and psychological guidance" isn't just more "you can take charge" - with the hidden implication that it's YOUR OWN fault, you did it so you can fix it. It's actually a systemic design flaw of gargantuan proportions - a direct contradiction between our desire for worksaving technology and our CEOs' market-destroying downsizing response to it - instead of market-supporting timesizing.]
  
  • Marika & Howard Stone, *Too Young to Retire (Writers' Collective), $14.
  • Stephen Pollan & Mark Levine, Second Acts: Creating the Life You Really Want (HarperResource), $23.

1. Pension plans: House-Senate differences cloud prospects for legislation, by Jackie Calmes, WSJ, A4.
   [May be just as well.]
   Senate Finance Committee's bill likely will provide a smaller safe harbor than a House bill, or none, for firms such as Merrill Lynch that still want to both advise workers and offer their own products for workers' 401k's. It also may expand plan-contribution limits less than a House bill would.
   The Senate Health panel weighs its own pension bill. Competing Finance and Health versions died last year, and a repeat is possible. Changes to cash-balance plans are unlikely in any of the bills, despite last week's federal-court ruling that some such plans are age-discriminatory.
   [Making any of the bills useless.]
   Lawmakers want courts and Treasury to sort through the issues.
   [Passing the buck again. A Congress of wimps and dummies. "Here, YOU do it."]

2. Delta's special bankruptcy-proof pension program, pointer blurb (to column 5), WSJ, front page.
   ...which the carrier had set up to retain its top executives during the industry's worst financial crisis, hasn't kept some from leaving the company and taking their pensions with them. Already, 3 of the 35 employees in the retention plan have left.
   [Luxurious "retention plans" during corporate slumps are about the stupidest executive scams going.]

1. Consultants' e-mails to IBM executives, pointer blurb (A3), WSJ, front page.
   ...show how some of the firm's pension changes would affect younger [yuk] versus older [worse than yuk] workers.

2. Online today - Fiscally fit, pointer blurb (to wsj.com), WSJ, front page.
   Employers don't always make it easy for older workers to catch up if they're running behind on retirement savings. Terri Cullen explains what to do when the boss won't help.

3. Foes of pension cuts attack Brazil's Congress, Reuters via NYT, A8.
   BRASILIA...- Dozens of protesters attacked Brazil's Congress today, hurling rocks and manhole covers through windows after lawmakers in the lower house passed deep cuts in the nation's huge public pensions system....

1. General Mills' pension plans fall short by $224m, Dow Jones/AP via NYT, C2.
   ...on May 25, compared with being overfinanced by $571m a year before....

2. [pension erosion spreads from old-age to disability -]
   The Erisa trap: When employees can't win - Workers find limited rights to sue over insurance claims; Pension act 'turned on its head', by Christopher Oster, WSJ, C1.
   In 1997, when Donya Anderson decided to deduct $7.36 a month from her paycheck to pay for disability-income insurance, she thought it was worth it for peace of mind.
   Her decision seemed vindicated 3 years later, when, 3 months pregnant with her 4th child, she submitted a claim with the insurer, UnumProvident Corp. Citing complications with Ms. Anderson's previous pregnancies and a job at a carpet factory that required lifting 50-pound bales of fabric and pushing 1,000-pound carts, her obstetrician had told her she should stop working.
   But Unum[non]Provident denied the claim, leaving Ms. Anderson...no choice but to quit her job in Andalusia, Ala., factory and apply for government assistance. Then, when she tried to sue in state court, the insurer successfully argued the case should be heard in federal court - and she wasn't eligible to seek punitive damages. A UnumProvident spokesman said the company couldn't discuss the case in detail "because we do not have a signed authorization from Ms. Anderson to discuss the claim and it's our policy to protect the privacy of our policyholders."
   The unravelling of Ms. Anderson's safety net highlights a new frustration among hundreds of thousands of workers across the country who have used chunks of their paychecks to buy insurance policies, as Ms. Anderson did, through an employer.
   The catch has come in the form of a 30-year-old law that long has hamstrung employees' ability to sue over disputes involving their employer-sponsored healthcare coverage. Known as the Employment Retirement Income Security Act, or Erisa, the law was passed in the early 1970s to protect individuals' pension rights. The law exempted employer-sponsored pension plans from state law and the Supreme Court later ruled that punitive damages couldn't be awarded in Erisa cases. Over the years, courts have ruled that insurance policies considered employee benefits also are subject to Erisa's state-law pre-emption. Long a bone of contention with plaintiffs' lawyer, the law has withstood multiple court challenges.
   In a development with far-reaching implications for workers, Erisa's grasp now extends far beyond pensions and health insurance....

• Nursing-home costs are climbing - Staying in a private room averages $181.24 a day; Home care is $18 an hour, by Kelly Greene, WSJ, D8.
  ...up 3% from the prior survey..\.. The average cost of home care is...going up...at a more modest pace..\.. The cost of staying in a nursing home is rising at nearly 4 times the rate of inflation. The average cost of a private room in a nursing home has jumped to $181.24 a day, up 8% from a survey 15 months ago, according to MetLife Inc. People who enter a nursing home stay there 2.4 years on average, according to government estimates, which means the typical bill would cost $158,766.
  [Gee, where do they go after their 2.4-yr stay? Ohoh, from this we learn that from when they stow you in the nursing home to your 'termination', you got roughly 2½ years left.   $158,766 for 2.4 yrs means $66,153 a year, up from the $57000 mentioned below on 8/02-04/2003 #3 below. Better stay at home!]
  There are wide ranges in average prices from place to place. ...Louisiana had the lowest....

1. 8/04 Landmark rulings, pointer blurb (to A3), NYT, front page.
   ...last week against IBM and Xerox, two companies that sought to profit by revising employees' pension plans, have unsettled hundreds of firms that have adopted similar programs. The court decisions are likely to force Congress and the Treasury to decide how to regulate so-called cash-balance pension plans.

2. 8/02 Xerox to pay $300m in pension dispute, Bloomberg via NYT, B4.
   ...Xerox was sued by retirees in 2000 over the methods it used to determine payments to 25,000 [former] employees....

3. 8/04 Nursing-home care, news blurb, WSJ, front page.
   ...costs an average of $57,000 a year, a GE Financial-sponsored survey found. That doesn't include drug or therapy costs.

• IBM discriminated, pointer blurb (to A3), WSJ, front page.
  ...against older workers in pension-plan changes, a [US district] court [for the Southern District of Illinois in East St. Louis] ruled, in a case with broad ramifications.
  [Good. A slight 'stay' in retirement erosion. Here's the indicated headline -]
  IBM pension changes are ruled discriminatory - Finding is viewed as boon to older workers in U.S.; Big Blue sees little impact [then why'd they do it?!], by Schultz & Bulkeley, WSJ, A3.
  ...Potentially, IBM could have to recalculate benefits for 130,000 employees and retirees, paying most of them more. \But the decision\ roiled corporations looking for ways to curb pension costs....
  [And the Times version -]
  Judge [Patrick Murphy] says I.B.M. pension shift illegally harmed older workers, by Mary Walsh, NYT, front page.
  ...In 1995 [IBM] switched to a hybrid called a pension equity plan, and in 1999 it converted to what is called a cash-balance plan [which] combines some features of traditional pensions...defined benefit...with other features of 401k[s].... Both...took away some benefits from older workers and gave them less time than their younger colleagues to build up new [benefits].... The 1999 changes caused an uproar..\.. IBM made various changes.... Judge Murphy found [them] insufficient....
  [For the 'skinny' on traditional defined-benefit plans and new consumer-confidence-bashing cash-balance plans, see 5/08/2002.]

1. BP earnings rise as energy firm tackles pensions, by Michael Wang, WSJ, A2.
   LONDON - BP PLC said its Q2 earnings jumped 69% on higher oil and natural-gas prices, but the big energy company said it would spend up to $2B to prop up its pension funds....
   [One of the few that isn't just going to whine and fingerpoint, while top executives strip it bare. Natural-gas prices up, eh? Wonder why that could be....]
   Williams Cos. to settle charges of [natural-gas price] index manipulation, Bloomberg via NYT, C3.

2. Social security benefits, news blurb, WSJ, front page.
   ...would have to be cut by nearly one-third by 2039 if changes aren't made to bolster solvency, a GAO report says.

• Retirement plans reduce choices - After years of expanding investment options, companies decide fewer funds may be better, by Rachel Silverman, WSJ, D1.
  ...During the boom [ie: bubble] years, investors clamoring for the latest hot tech funds pushed for ever-more options. But now there is an emerging sense that employees may actually be more inclined to put money in their retirement plans if they have fewer choices.... A recent study by economists at Columbia University found that 401k participation is higher when employees are offered fewer fund choices.... 2 investment options, 75%...sign up.... 60...choices...60%. Every additional 10 investment choices, on average, reduces expected participation rates by 2%..\..
  [How about the GOP way - NO choice, 100% participation, and if not, MANDATORY signup?! Apparently surviving employees have sensibly downpedaled dough into their 401k's, the financial industry is worried - and another silly fad 'mysteriously' sweeps thru corporate America's addled brainstems -]
  
  • ...Rethinking [its] 401k offerings, Ford Motor Co., for example, has trimmed its menu of funds nearly in half in an attempt to make investing [ie: speculating] less overwhelming for employees.
    [This is all "for employees" of course.]
    
  • Sierra Pacific Pacific Resources, a holding company for two Nevada utilities, recently reduced the core fund offerings for its 3,200 workers to 19 funds from 43.
  [And where is the seething center of this new dogma?]
  Indeed, large retirement-plan administrators such as Vanguard Group [oh sure, put the good guys first!], Merrill Lynch's Retirement Group, and Manulife Financial all say they're seeing companies streamline their investment choices. Some companies have trimmed their offerings from several dozen funds to about 15 or fewer....
  [So, like economy, like retirement plans = more money into fewer, grabbier hands - and consequently, by the marginal-utility-of-capital doctrine, less utility - in terms of jobs, centrifugation of money flows, activated spending power, sustainable markets, robust recovery....]

• New rules urged to avert looming pension crisis - The tricky task of protecting retirement benefits without roiling the markets, by Mary Walsh, NYT, front page & A15.
  [Oh go ahead, ROIL the markets. That's what they're there for. And brokers make money either way anyway.]
  Top government officials [say] corporate pension plans...may be on a road to collapse.
  • ...On Wednesday [7/23], the comptroller general [name??] placed the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. [PBGC], the agency that guarantees pensions, on a list of "high risk" government operations.
  • Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Labor, issued a statement on the same day warning that the decades-old system in which workers earn government-guaranteed pensions "is, unfortunately, at risk."
  • Treasury Secy John Snow, a former RR CEO who had responsibility for a $1.3B pension fund [and what shape is IT in now??], warned recently that a financial meltdown similar to the S&L collapse of 1989 [all quickly swept under the carpet by the GOP as we recall] might be brewing.
    [And like it, all a result of the grab&run tactics of some CEOs.]
  Steven Kandarian, the exec. director of the PBGC...this month...foresaw a possible "general revenue transfer" - polite words for a bailout of the agency....
  [Well if the GOP slime can waste $455-475B a year on an unprovoked war for the sake of their conflicted-interest dogma that (no evidence) Iraq pulled off 9/11 instead of (all kinds of evidence) Saudi Arabia, then they can certainly bail out the PBGC. Somebody should write a book on how the GOP changed from the smart party to the dumb party.]

• WHX agrees to settle pension lawsuit, Bloomberg via NYT, B3.
  ...for workers at its Wheeling-Pittsburgh steel unit.... The settlement...is conditioned on completion of the reorganization plan..\.. The agreement, between WHX, the United Steelworkers of America and the Pension Guaranty Corp., the federal agency that oversees pensions, ends a lawsuit the agency filed in New York, WHX said....
  [No details, but clearly another example where the gov't agency still has to sue to get the private-sector to honor its obligations to retirees.]

• French pension 'reform' passes in a landslide [our quotes], AO via WSJ, A12.
  PARIS - ...Public-sector workers currently have to work 37.5 years to qualify for full benefits. The measure will require them to stay on the job 40 years, as in the private sector, by 2008. By 2012, everyone will have to work 41 years to receive full retirement benefits; by 2020, 42 years.
  [This is a 2-edged sword. First, by lengthening worktime, it's a Bad Thing. But efforts to shorten worktime should be focused on much shorter units than the worklife, units such as the workyear and particularly the workweek. Mandatory retirement is a worklife cap that involves a blank check on taxpayers as human longevity is extended by medical breakthroughs. Blank checks are unsustainable. Therefore mandatory retirement should be translated into mandatory workweek caps and the complete elimination of mandatory overtime, which violates workweek caps. So from the viewpoint of the shorter worktime imperative, shortening the private-sector's worklife requirements would have been better than lengthening the public-sector's worklife requirements as this legislation does. However, since we're dealing with capping worktime per person per lifetime, we get into conflict with medical goals to prolong quality human longevity, which takes precedence. We can resolve the conflict by mapping the capping from worklife to workweek, and translating the retirement benefits into disability benefits, which must then be secondarily translated into training benefits. Because with modern work-aid technology such as that available to Stephen Hawking and others, the category of "disability" to support oneself can and is being constantly reduced.]

1. Changes to pension bill spur a political dispute, pointer digest (to A1), NYT, B1.
   More than a dozen Democrats on the House Ways & Means Committee - infuriated by last-minute changes to a pension bill - left a hearing and holed up in an adjacent library, prompting the committee's Republican chairman, Bill Thomas, to summon the police.
   [Both in Texas and now in Washington, it seems the Republicans would just as soon throw the opposition in jail as they transform our society more and more into fundamentalist Iraq.]
   At issue was a bill that would make changes to federal pension laws, including increasing the amount workers can contribute to their retirement accounts.
   [Doesn't sound that inflammatory. Here's the indicated article -]
   Sound, fury, pension rules: Nasty party clash in House - A substituted bill about pensions leads Democrats to vote with their feet, by Sheryl Stolberg, NYT, front page & A9.
   ...Republicans had written a substitute bill in the middle of the night, prompting Democrats, some of whom support the measure [presumably the original daytime bill], to complain that they had been denied a fair chance to review the changes. The walkout was the latest evidence of the bitter partisanship that prevails in the House [or of the mounting arrogance of the GOP], where increasingly Democrats accuse Republicans of using procedural maneuvers to rig votes and limit debate....
   But it was not entirely without precedent. As recently as 1988 [that's not recent, that's 15 years ago!], the Capitol Police - acting on the orders of Sen. Robert Byrd [D-WV] then the majority leader, arrested Sen. Bob Packwood [R, Ore.] and carried him feet-first into the Senate chamber, bringing a dramatic climax to a middle-of-the-night filibuster.
   [Inadequate background information for fair comparison. And again, kind of a stretch back in time to find a reversal of party roles. The invocation Homeland Security and police to search for bolted Texas Democrats was much more recent -]
   To some, the events seemed eerily reminiscent of the recent walkout by Democratic legislators in Texas, who fled to Oklahoma to thwart a vote on redistricting....
   While the Democrats were in absentia, [Republicans] voted to approve the pension measure and send it to the full House....
   [One-party "democracy" spreads in America. We are becoming our former enemies, the USSR.]

2. The committee approved, pointer digest (to A9), NYT, B1.
   ...legislation that would allow companies to use a more favorable pension calculation that will save them from having to make tens of billions of dollars in pension contributions over the next three years, according to actuarial studies.
   [Sounds more inflammatory. The indicated article is -]
   House panel acts on pension calculations, by Mary Walsh, NYT, A9.

1. Will Congress let accounting fiction obscure pension reality?, by Floyd Norris, NYT. C1.
   What should be done when an important sector of the American economy has severe problems?... Look for an accounting gimmick to obscure the reality..\..avoid admitting the problems and hope that time will make everything better [aka "heal all wounds"]. That is how the government dealt with the early days of the savings and loan crisis two decades ago. It made the situation much worse.... Which brings us to the corporate pension system.
   Much of corporate America is looking for a way to make its pension deficits appear smaller than they really are, and the politicians [are] tempted to comply. The [companies'] argument...is that if something is not done to make pensions look better, then many companies will terminate their plans. So if you want them to [tell] the truth about the health of pension plans, you are working against the interests of workers who want to collect those pensions.
   [Orwellian 'New Speak' spirals on.]
   The reverse is true. Applying reality now would make it harder to avoid putting cash into pension plans that need it. And while those payments might be painful, they would leave the plans more likely to meet their obligations and avoid a crisis....

2. Lawmakers dilute Brazilian pension changes, Dow Jones via WSJ, A7.
   BRASILIA - A Brazilian congressional committee, after wrangling with state governors and in the face of a partial strike by federal workers, watered down [but not much!] the government's proposal to overhaul [alias "reform"] the country's deficit-ridden pension system....

1. Nursing homes improve quality, but not enough, by Sarah Lueck, WSJ, D2.
   [And there are a lot fewer nursing homes too.]
   ...A new report \by\ the General Accounting Office [GAO], Congress's investigative arm, found that serious deficiencies or harm to residents occurred at one in five [20%] of the nation's nursing homes over an 18-month period that ended in January 2002. While the situation has improved since an earlier survey turned up 29% of nursing homes with serious deficiencies, the problem "remains unacceptably high," the GAO wrote in a report to be released today...based on state surveys.
   Another problem: Poor investigation of complaints and a large number of inexperienced surveyors in some states lead to understatement of quality problems, the GAO found....

2. The politics of pension promises, by David Wessel, WSJ, A2.
   Even by Washington standards, the standing-room-only hearing on pensions, held in a cavernous, but stately room in the Rayburn House Office Building this week, seemed remarkably detached from reality.... The occasion was the Bush Treasury's attempt to slow a business- and union-backed bill that changes the way employers calculate pension obligations, an arcane issue on which tens of billions of dollars ride. The easy-to-understand, underlying issue is this: American employers have made big pension promises to workers, and too many companies don't set aside enough money to keep those promises....
   In the metaphor du jour, very low interest rates, the decline in stock prices and a rising number of retirees produce "a perfect storm" for pension funds. In all, corporate-pension plan promises amount to $1.5 trillion, but their assets are worth $300 billion less than that [ie: 1.5-0.3= $1.2T]....

• Bush pension proposals get a cold reception from Congress, by Mary Walsh, NYT, C2.
  ...detailed plans...for how America's pension system might be strengthened[??]...received a cold reception from members of Congress, who...feared the measures would hurt the companies that offer the pensions.
  [The race proceeds apace, to see who can most coddle already-cushioned CEOs, regardless of damage to America's consumer base and thence, consumer markets, business markets and stock markets.]
  Representatives from both parties agreed that \the\ current method for calculating pension obligations...needed to be changed, but they repeatedly challenged \the\ Treasury undersecy for domestic finance, Peter Fisher['s] proposal, saying it might be too harsh and cause companies to stop offering pensions. "Your protection is going to 'protect' workers right out of their pensions," said Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D, Calif.)....

• United Airlines may face deeper challenges... - Documents disclose [at least $1B] wider pension deficit, by Mary Walsh, NYT, C1.

1. 7/14 Medicare drug benefit is a mixed bag for the elderly - Many potential beneficiaries say proposed coverage is too skimpy; Others find provisions confusing - Employers will face many choices, including trimming or cutting out prescription programs for retirees, by Lueck & Murray & Hawkins, WSJ, B1.
   [This is apparently part of a series called "Retooling Medicare." If the Journal was honest, it would call it, "Gutting Medicare."]

2. [and another one of the technology-ignoring "oh what'll we ever do now all those baby boomers are retiring?!" articles -]
   7/13 Boomer exit to leave gap in work force - Retirements may strain companies, by Alan Earls, Boston Globe, G1.
   [Actually, demographic bulges like this are another big argument for flexible worksharing via fluctuating adjustment of the workweek.]

• Bush may sweeten pension rules for businesses, by Murray & McKinnon, WSJ, A4.
  [Ah, haven't they been doin' enough of that themselves? - see yesterday's story. Bush must be 'missing a chip on his motherboard.']

• Coming up short - Firms had a hand in pension plight they now bemoan - Relying on arcane rules, some have drawn down assets for corporate purposes - Now, asking Congress for relief [pathetic!] - Many big companies restructured pensions in a way that made them look better-funded, thus instantly reducing the companies' obligations to pour more cash into their pension funds, by Ellen Schultz, WSJ, front page & A2.
  [Let's pick up the gist from the news blurb 4 columns 'east' on A1 -]
  U.S. companies contributed to the problem of underfunded pension plans by siphoning off billions of dollars during the past decade to pay for severance and health benefits. Many employers have been putting less money into pension plans because they adopted structural changes that made the plans appear better-funded on paper.

1. The House voted, pointer blurb (to B12), WSJ, front page.
   ...to ensure federal retirees, including lawmakers, keep their more-generous coverage after passage of Medicare drug legislation....
   [while everyone else gets cuts.]

2. Brazil federal workers strike over pension plan, Dow Jones via WSJ, A12.
   ...Public workers fear big cuts to retirement benefits \from\ 'reforms' [our quotes]....
   [Same B.S. everywhere.]

1. Retirement-plan investing, pointer blurb (to C1), WSJ, front page.
   ...represented 85% of all net buying of mutual funds last year, keeping fund flows in positive territory.
   [So again, we see liquidity-driven buoyancy, all but 15% self-referencing. So how long can self-referencing, liquidity-driven investing alone keep funds in positive territory?]

2. New retirement age needed to head off fiscal train wreck, by Alan Murray, WSJ, B4.
   ...I have a soft spot for Howard Dean because he said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he would "entertain taking the retirement age to 68" for full Social Security and Medicare benefits....

3. White House seeks revised pension rules - Plan changes the way values are calculated - More company disclosure is proposed for retirement plans, by Mary Walsh, NYT, C1.
   The Bush administration is preparing this week to introduce...pension legislation that could reduce corporate pension liabilities by billions of dollars over the next two years....
   [Greaaat. That would leave billions of dollars for CEOs to scoop up and compact in the top brackets, and further stifle consumer spending and deepen recession.]

• France: Deputies approve pensions bill, AP via NYT, A5.
  After 156 hours of debate over 19 days, the National Assembly has passed, by a vote of 389 to 132, a pension proposal put forward by the government that would require workers [gov't workers only, to align them with the private sector - see 6/11/2003 #4] to stay on the job several more years [2½] than at present [37½] to be eligible...
  [fair enough, but...]
  ...for pensions, which would be smaller.
  [ohoh]
  The proposal led to a series of national one-day work stoppages. The bill is expected to go to the Senate on Monday and be adopted into law by the end of the month.

1. Most workers are in dark on health of their pensions - US Airways killed a plan that pilots had no inkling was in financial danger, by Ellen Schultz & Theo Francis, WSJ, front page.

2. G.M. profit gets lift from pension deal, by Mary Walsh, NYT, C1.
   ...selling $13.1B of bonds to raise cash for its needy pension fund...but it turns out that a company can actually book millions of dollars of profit on such a deal, thanks to the peculiar rules that govern pension accounting....

For earlier retirement stories, click on the desired date -