The Plight of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) was created by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to insure the vested benefits of defined benefit pension plans. Over the past 40 years its funding requirements and insurance premiums have been strengthened and increased many times, most recently by the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of (December) 2014. Yet the PBGC remains in difficult straights. The plight of the PBGC is that, whatever it does to improve its short-run prospects will result in more plan failures and terminations in the long run.