Note to Freepers everywhere - this is not perfectly analogous to the S&L Crisis. In that situation people laced money on deposit with organizations which could offer the federal government backing prospectively. It was a contractual obligation through federal deposit insurance. Now that was a debacle - but the PGBC is not federally guaranteed. It will take an act of Congress to take federal taxpayer money and siphon it to the pension beneficiaries of these dead and dying corporations. It will be one incredible political mess - but it is no foregone conclusion that Congress would do such a thing. Right now the Delta pilots are trying to obliterate the airline - there is no way that the general revenue taxpayer should pick up the tab for that.
Congress and the administration are hard at work to raise the PBGC insurance premiums that employers pay each year. Why have the voting taxpayer pay for Congress' mess when evil corporations can bear the brunt?
Once defined benefit plans are dead, they'll pick on the defined contribution plans.