France voted to overhaul its pension sytem as reported here by the Boston Globe: “France overhauls pension law.” This came despite weeks of protests by French workers in May and June as previously reported on here.
United Airlines is pushing aggressively for legislation that would allow the company to defer payments to its massively under-funded pension plans, the company’s chief executive said Thursday, as reported by Anne C. Mulkern for the Denver Post in this article: “United pushes for pension-plan help: Airline wants to defer payments to ailing fund.”
You can also read this interesting story about pension rights for elephants in India as reported by the BBC: “Pension rights for Indian elephants: Elephants employed by the state of Kerala in southern India are to be granted full retirement benefits at the age of 65.” (I even heard Paul Harvey refer to this story yesterday as we were listening to him on our way back from Chincoteague Island.)
The Wall Street Journal carried an op-ed on Tuesday by Peter R. Fisher, undersecretary of the Treasury: “Redefined Benefits.” (Subscription required.) The article stated that “[d]iscounting pension liabilities over the long term using a single, one-size-fits-all corporate bond rate would lead to systematic underfunding of pension plans with predominantly older workers.” Another op-ed in the Journal on the same day–“Pension Reform For Fruitcakes“–states that “the House Ways and Means Committee ducked wider reform by voting a quick fix: Pension plans would get the fat carrot of replacing the 30-year Treasury rate with a corporate bond rate.”