« Calpine to be Delisted | Main | The Market Today »

Here's your scary article for the day. If companies were forced to account for their pensions properly, it would knock $250 billion, or about 7%, off the shareholder equity of the S&P 500.

Credit Suisse estimates that only 21% of the $1.3 trillion in S&P 500 pension fund assets are currently reported on balance sheets. Here's a little-known fact: While companies have to tell the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (and by extension, Congress) what their pension liabiliites, Congress is prohibited, by law, from telling shareholders or employees. Not only might we be facing a pension crises, we don't know what we don't know.

Posted by edelfenbein at December 5, 2005 2:24 PM