The pension-plan cookie thief

By The Mogambo Guru

To show you that the level of disgusting corruption at the end of long booms created by an excess of money and credit extends beyond the obvious slimeballs at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Congress, the Federal Reserve, the banks, and damned near everywhere else you look, a headline in last Monday's Wall Street Journal adds to the total tonnage of crud with the page one headline "Companies Tap Pension Plans To Fund Executive Benefits", which let companies use the pension plans of the regular employees to "pay for executives' supplemental benefits and compensation."

Now, I will note for the record that every time I try that crap with the employee pension plan or the petty cash account at work, everybody starts running around screaming about what a thieving, lying, despicable crook I am, and then everybody else starts adding to the accusatory din by saying how I'm probably the one who stole the cookies out of their stupid sack lunches, too, which weren't all that good (and kind of stale, too), so I don't know what all the fuss is about.