U.S. May Be Preparing Filing for Chrysler Bankruptcy: NYT Link
2009-04-23 19:30:30.339 GMT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/business/24chrysler.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
Whazzamatter, can't the Barracudas at Cerberus fill out their own docts? In 1978-79 it took a Caravan of lawyers and an act of Congress -- the Vipers, literally, to have the U.S. govt perform such meddling. Today? Well, who needs law when you can rule by FIAT! (pun very much intended). As a rookie commercial lending officer "back in the day" I had to give the Chrysler Loan Gty Act and the then-new Chapter 11 (replacing Ch. XI) a side-by-side reading as my territory was the auto-belt, now rust-belt, of MI, OH, and IN.
The PBGC picks up only $2 bln of the $9.3 bln pension shortfall. That's assuming the $9.3b is fully valued. While ERISA plans are more accurate than GASBs, there are still some holes in the PPA of 2006 reforms, letting them Dodge their responsibilities. Pensioners and those soon-to-be, will find this Challenger-ing as the $7.3b gap is for their account.
While the UAW is hardly a sympathetic entity, why must the bricks fall on the poor slobs who spent 30 years on the assembly line. They did their jobs, so why can't management and the PBGC? It was the loss of Studebaker employees' pensions in ~1967 that led to ERISA and PBGC. Through (hyper-) active political mismanagement of ERISA, at the behest of corporate plan sponsors and with the full connivance of FASB, we're back to where we started. It was all so entirely unnecessary and avoidable. J'accuse! (It's so depressing, I've even lost interest in making more puns.)
JRB
4/23/09
No comments:
Post a Comment