"Once considered secure, pooled pensions are failing; US-backed plans losing members, contributions" by Mary Williams Walsh | New York Times April 13, 2014
NEW YORK — The pensions of millions of Americans are being threatened because of trouble in a part of the retirement world long considered so safe that no one gave it a second thought.
The pensions belong to people in multiemployer plans — big pooled investment funds with many sponsoring companies and a union.
Why am I getting the feel we are seeing another Wall Street rip-off?
Multiemployer pensions are not only backed by federal insurance, but they also were thought to be even more secure than single-company pensions because when one company in a multiemployer pool failed, the others were required to pick up its “orphaned” retirees.
Today, however, the aging of the workforce, the decline of unions, deregulation, and two big stock crashes have taken a grievous toll on multiemployer pensions, which cover 10 million Americans.
Dozens of multiemployer plans have already failed, and some giant ones are teetering — including the Teamsters’ Central States pension plan, with more than 400,000 members.
In February, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the federal multiemployer insurer would run out of money in seven years, which would leave retirees in failed plans with nothing.
So business promises also mean nothing?
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“More than 1 million people will lose their pensions,” said Joshua Gotbaum, executive director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., or PBGC, the federal insurer that pays benefits to people whose company pension plans fail.
“If Congress allows the PBGC to get the money and the authority it needs to do its job, then these plans can be preserved,” he said. “If not, the PBGC will run out of money, too, and multiemployer pensioners will get virtually nothing.”
Related: Bush Bankrupted Pension Insurance Fund
And Obama has done nothing.
So far, efforts to keep multiemployer plans from toppling, and taking the federal insurance program down with them, are giving rise to something that was supposed to have been outlawed 40 years ago: cuts in benefits that workers have already earned.
Yes, the money junkies are coming for it all.
For example, after Carol Cascio’s husband died of a heart attack at 52, the pension office of his union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, told her his 33 years as a supermarket meat manager had earned her a widow’s pension of $402.31 a month for life. It would start in three years, on what would have been his 55th birthday.
Just before her first payment should have come, she received a letter instead saying that the pension plan had been “terminated by mass withdrawal” and that she would receive nothing.
“Now I’m in a real pickle,” said Cascio, 62, who borrowed against the promised pension to pay for her daughter’s education. “I have no one. I have a mortgage on my house. I have my daughter. How do you do this to someone?”
“Only a few years ago, it would have been inconceivable that anyone would have their benefits reduced,” said Karen W. Ferguson, director of the Pension Rights Center, a watchdog group in Washington. “The law hasn’t caught up with what’s happening here.”
A lot of things were seemingly inconceivable years ago.
The law she was referring to is the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, enacted in 1974. It contains a well-established provision known as the anticutback rule, which holds that companies can freeze pension plans at will, but they cannot renege on benefits workers have earned by work already performed.
Look, it's a corporate-ruled society now so all that stuff is being returned to the American people. The money junkies are gobbling it all up. This is the death throes of the U.S. empire right here. The lying looters are coming for it all.
In the multiemployer world, the anticutback rule was amended in 2006, permitting the weakest plans to stop paying certain benefits to people who had not yet retired.
The goal was to help those plans conserve their money while they try to rehabilitate themselves. Experts say the measures have helped, but some multiemployer plans may still fail if they cannot cut payments to retirees as well.
So where did all the money go in the pension plans from the failed companies? Who got to keep that money? Gordon Gecko? Bain Capital?
Cascio’s pension turned out to be in a category subject to cutting: pensions for widows whose husbands died before retirement.
How heartle$$ do you have to be to cut off widows?
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That is supposed to save money so the plan can keep on paying other retirees their “nonforfeitable benefits” while it negotiates bigger contributions from participating companies, or tries to attract new companies into the pool.
That could not happen in Cascio’s case. A few months before her husband died, all the supermarkets in his plan decided to disband the pool. He told her not to worry. Each company was making a final contribution to what is known as a “wasting trust,” which would have enough money to pay everyone’s pensions for the rest of their lives.
Then the stock market crashed in 2008. Much of the money in the pool melted away, and there was no one left to turn to for more. Amazing.
Five years later banks are booking record profits after being rewarded and bailed out for their thieving schemes, but those pensions you thought you worked so hard for, American?
The planned impoverishment of the American people and the theft of all their wealth continues.
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I'm going to pool together these other items as well:
"Pension deal with retired police, firefighters lifts hopes in Detroit" by Monica Davey | New York Times April 16, 2014
NEW YORK — An organization representing retired firefighters and police officers has reached a deal with the City of Detroit that would prevent cuts to its members’ pensions, officials said Tuesday. The agreement could potentially help draw other groups of retirees and city workers into negotiated agreements, moving the city closer to emerging from the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation’s history.
Ever notice executive and administrative contracts are $acro$anct?
I suppose the deal could have been even more miserable, but....
Still, the arrangement with the Retired Detroit Police and Fire Fighters Association, which represents about 6,500 retirees, is but one piece of a larger puzzle known as the plan of adjustment, Detroit’s blueprint for paying off portions of its $18 billion in debt. With time for negotiations running short, an array of groups representing the interests of Detroit’s 20,000 municipal retirees and 10,000 current employees are making intense efforts to reach agreements.
That is one reason to reach for your wallet. Nice of the city to pit the law enforcement wing against everyone else, 'eh? Still taking over an hour to answer those calls?
A central point of contention has long been the prospect of cutting the pension checks of retired workers, despite protections of those benefits in the state’s Constitution.
As if any level of AmeriKan government actually followed such things!
Under the agreement with the Retired Detroit Police and Fire Fighters Association, the current pension benefits of retired firefighters and police officers would remain intact, though cost-of-living increases could be smaller than they are now, according to a document released by court mediators.
Anything to get more money in the hands of banks and money addicts!
The changes clearly suggested concessions from city officials, who had in earlier restructuring proposals contemplated cuts to the pension benefits of those retirees of at least 6 percent and an end to cost-of-living increases. Their earlier plans called for still larger cuts — of at least 26 percent — to the pensions for non-uniformed municipal retirees whose circumstances were not affected by the deal announced Tuesday.
Meaning the militarized branches of government -- cops and fire -- are elevated above you teachers and the rest.
Welcome to 21st-century Amerika, readers!
Detroit does not need to have agreements with all of its more than 100,000 creditors to pay off parts of its debts and emerge from bankruptcy.
But the possibility of support from its retirees is tantalizing: It would probably give the plan of adjustment a better chance in court, where a federal judge must ultimately determine whether it is fair.
And it would also make WALL STREET a hell of a lot happier!
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At least they are working hard!
"Man sentenced to life for killing 4 Michigan women" Associated Press April 16, 2014
MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. — A man convicted of killing four women whom he met through an online escort site opted to stay in his jail cell Tuesday when a Detroit-area judge sentenced him to life in prison in a courtroom packed with victims’ relatives.
James Brown’s voluntary no-show is legal — and it was not surprising to the mother of one of his victims.
‘‘I don’t blame him — I wouldn’t show up either,’’ said Denise Higgins, who spoke in court about Brown and her family’s pain over losing Vernithea McCrary.
The James Brown show was canceled?
After the sentencing, Higgins said that she wished she could have seen Brown’s reaction to getting life in prison, but that his actions and absence only prove ‘‘the guy has no respect for life, period.’’
The women met Brown through Backpage.com, which carries personal ads for people looking for sex....
I thought the government and industry shut those down after the Craig's List killer Markoff.
Where is the NSA when you really need them?
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I don't feel good.
Also see: Detroit's Reginald Denny
Bunch of delinquents.
