The property rights conservatives don't care about: pensions

Kathy G noted on Friday—

the Wall Street Journal has long been my favorite newspaper. Yes, the editorial and opinion pages (with the blessed exception of Tom Frank) are barking mad -- clearly. But the news bureau is probably the best in the business. Every good lefty should read the Journal -- no other daily paper in this country provides a better map as to where the bodies are buried in American capitalism.

—and today the Journal furnishes another stunning example:

At a time when scores of companies are freezing pensions for their workers, some are quietly converting their pension plans into resources to finance their executives' retirement benefits and pay.

In recent years, companies from Intel Corp. to CenturyTel Inc. collectively have moved hundreds of millions of dollars of obligations for executive benefits into rank-and-file pension plans. This lets companies capture tax breaks intended for pensions of regular workers and use them to pay for executives' supplemental benefits and compensation.

The practice has drawn scant notice. A close examination by The Wall Street Journal shows how it works and reveals that the maneuver, besides being a dubious use of tax law, risks harming regular workers. It can drain assets from pension plans and make them more likely to fail. Now, with the current bear market in stocks weakening many pension plans, this practice could put more in jeopardy....

Read where the bodies are buried here.

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