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Comment by mobilefriendly | Hacker News Reader

Please do some more research on this topic before making policy demands that are already current law. Pension obligations are what took the company down-- they were behind on paying into the pension fund.

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I think the commenter was pretty explicit about their lack of knowledge on the subject. Their viewpoint is logical from first principles, but it seems like it's off-base in the facts.

Would you mind elaborating a bit more on the 'current law' aspects? I think that would be more constructive than: 'do some more research on this topic before [commenting].'

I also know nothing about this, but from reading the article and your comment, I'm confused how they arrived at this point of being $805 million behind in their pension obligations if current law is solid on this point. Maybe it took them down in the end, but shouldn't the intervention have happened far sooner?

Not OP but to a certain extent this is an inescapable part of finance and economics. If inflation or interest rates shift the payee might not have enough money to increase their contributions. The rule of thumb is usually that when the stock market is up the bond market is down. Well, the stock market is in the midst of the longest expansion in US history. Nobody knows when it will shift in the other direction.

Here's more info on US pension law, the fight in the Senate was over whether to give the newspaper more time to "catch up" their payments to the pension fund.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Retirement_Income_Sec...

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