Sunday, June 30, 2013

It's bigger than the Wall Street mortgage scandal

Unfortunately, this thing starts out with a painfully long and pointless series of introductions and professional back slapping.

Stick with it. When the speaker starts, she gets into high gear fast?

Pension plans are underfunded?

They weren't - until they were looted.

CEOs have been raiding them with fancy accounting to boost their company's stock prices in order to boost their "performance based" bonuses.

Trillions of dollars have been stolen then way in broad daylight - but it's all "legal."

From YouTube:

The decline in employer-sponsored pension and retiree health plans is a troubling trend that has eroded the retirement security of millions of Americans. Stock market losses and low interest rates have weakened pension funding, and employers say that this -- combined with retiree longevity, rising costs and the need to compete globally -- is forcing them to freeze pensions and cut retiree benefits.

However, Ellen Schultz, a former investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal, says that employers' practices also played a role. In her new book, Retirement Heist, Schultz contends that large companies, aided by benefits consultants and lawyers, have played a largely overlooked role in the decline of American pensions and benefits. At this November 2011 event, Schultz and other experts explored the numerous examples of companies using their pension funds and retiree benefit cuts to bolster profits and boost compensation for senior executives at the expense of rank-and-file workers.

This event was hosted jointly by the New America Foundation, the Pension Rights Center and AARP.

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