Obviously, bailouts are going to help at least a few multiemployer pensions in the short run, but as I showed earlier, the amount being shoveled at MEPs is only a small percentage of the amount needed to make plans whole.
Certain arguments are so lost that it isn't really worth bringing them up again, but sometimes I feel the need to shout in a vacuum. The federal government never guaranteed any private pensions. Despite its name, the PBGC guarantees nothing, and explicitly was not funded by the federal government; it is better described as an insurance mechanism funded by the private companies offering pensions only. The multi-employer pension funds and the church funds fought to be excluded from the funding rules that apply to the single employer pension funds, because the employers and the employee representatives did not want to have to fund them adequately. This bailout is a travesty.
Okay, I agree with you, HOWEVER, the politicians were not going to let the PBGC go under, which is what was going to happen.
It's like all the "when the Social Security Trust Fund runs out, benefits will get cut 25%...." etc. But we all know that's not going to happen. Congress would act to make sure that doesn't happen.
I am just appalled at the putative 100% bailout AND requiring plans to undo any benefit cuts from MPRA to get the bailout funds. What awful incentives.
I don't believe that letting PBGC fail was the most likely outcome, just as I don't believe that letting the current Social Security law play out with a 25% across the board cut is the most likely outcome either. I would have said both were possible outcomes among a range of possible outcomes; and I would have said 3 years ago that letting PBGC fail was a more likely outcome than this across the board bailout.
In the same way, I would have thought that allowing the 25% cut of social security a more likely outcome than a pure bailout, continuing current payments with no increase in revenue. Now, I have to worry that the impossible, unthinkable unfunded bailouts of Social Security or the public pensions are less impossible and unthinkable.
I keep worrying that this is what the years before hyperinflation felt like in Germany or Hungary; becoming less and less sure that the impossible wouldn't happen.
Certain arguments are so lost that it isn't really worth bringing them up again, but sometimes I feel the need to shout in a vacuum. The federal government never guaranteed any private pensions. Despite its name, the PBGC guarantees nothing, and explicitly was not funded by the federal government; it is better described as an insurance mechanism funded by the private companies offering pensions only. The multi-employer pension funds and the church funds fought to be excluded from the funding rules that apply to the single employer pension funds, because the employers and the employee representatives did not want to have to fund them adequately. This bailout is a travesty.
Okay, I agree with you, HOWEVER, the politicians were not going to let the PBGC go under, which is what was going to happen.
It's like all the "when the Social Security Trust Fund runs out, benefits will get cut 25%...." etc. But we all know that's not going to happen. Congress would act to make sure that doesn't happen.
I am just appalled at the putative 100% bailout AND requiring plans to undo any benefit cuts from MPRA to get the bailout funds. What awful incentives.
I don't believe that letting PBGC fail was the most likely outcome, just as I don't believe that letting the current Social Security law play out with a 25% across the board cut is the most likely outcome either. I would have said both were possible outcomes among a range of possible outcomes; and I would have said 3 years ago that letting PBGC fail was a more likely outcome than this across the board bailout.
In the same way, I would have thought that allowing the 25% cut of social security a more likely outcome than a pure bailout, continuing current payments with no increase in revenue. Now, I have to worry that the impossible, unthinkable unfunded bailouts of Social Security or the public pensions are less impossible and unthinkable.
I keep worrying that this is what the years before hyperinflation felt like in Germany or Hungary; becoming less and less sure that the impossible wouldn't happen.