Finances Bleak at Pension Agency - Washington Post 11/16/2005

The government's pension insurance agency remains deeply in the red and expects things to get worse as it assumes responsibility for more retirement benefits that had been promised by airlines and companies in other troubled industries.

In its annual report to Congress, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. reported that the value of pension benefits it is obligated to pay exceeded its assets by $22.8 billion at the end of fiscal 2005. That figure is a slight improvement from a year earlier, when the shortfall was $23.3 billion.

PBGC officials said unspecified "events subsequent to the fiscal year," which ended Sept. 30, will make matters worse. Had those events occurred before Sept. 30, the deficit would have been $25.7 billion, the agency said.

The PBGC counts as liabilities pensions it has taken over plus those that it probably will take over. It is possible that the unspecified events mentioned by the PBGC include the recent bankruptcy filing by autoparts maker Delphi Corp.

Delphi "looks like the right order of magnitude" to account for the jump after Sept. 30, said Julia L. Coronado of benefits consultants Watson Wyatt Worldwide in Arlington.