<p>Yes…</p>
<p>I leave airline stocks and bonds out of my portfolio…</p>
<p>Thanks for the report. It appears that the recession took a big toll on the pension fund and that it didn’t recover with the stock market. Maybe they do have a lot of HP stock. HP stock cratered recently due to a dispute with one of their software vendors which is in the courts now. They’ve had a lot of management issue and have overall struggled for the last decade. I have friends that work there and they were a very big employer in my area. They have moved those employees to another area nearby so there are still a lot of their employees in my area that commute or tele-commute.</p>
<p>It’s too bad - I still have one of their calculators that I bought in the late 1970s and I still use it. It’s a programmable calculator that had a lot of software packages available in engineering and scientific fields. Pretty amazing stuff for the 1970s.</p>
<p>I didn’t know that they bulked up on leverage.</p>
<p>I think more details are needed…are HP’s assumprtions conservative…i don’t know.</p>
<p>I think I will start looking at pensions more when I invest…</p>
<p>I am long AK Steel…and their pension shortfall doesn’t look good.</p>
<p>This pension stuff is very complicated.</p>
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<p>No, they are not. We’ll see if Meg fixes them.</p>
<p>BTW, I just had a look at a layoff article. HP has a big operation in China - they won’t be laying off there. A big HP layoff locally will affect a decent number of people in my town.</p>
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<p>In some industries it matters; in others, not so much. IBM was reported to have a lot of problems with their pensions in the past but they’ve shot up like a rocket.</p>
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<p>I’ve always felt that AKS is a gambling stock.</p>
<p>AKS is a gambling stock…</p>
<p>I don’t really like it.</p>
<p>I bought it in 2008 or 2009. Sold a little in the rally later.</p>
<p>I don’t have much…</p>
<p>Which is a good thing…</p>
<p>One of the largest law firms in the world has gone under in the last week and is now being sued by the PBGC for pension irregularities. Apparently underfunded in the range of $80 million or something. The widows of the retired partners living in Florida are getting worried. Everyone else is screwed.</p>
<p>That is an ugly story, zoosermom.</p>
<p>I wonder how that story is going to play out.</p>
<p>The shockwaves are staggering. I have never seen anything like it in my entire career. I’ve been doing this for more than 25 years and have seen some very large firms come and go, but this is so bad that I have been having nightmares about it. I don’t think the legal employment market is going to recover for years.</p>
<p>How do you sue with no assets?</p>
<p>The PBGC usually trims pensions to around $30,000 so it might be a pretty big haircut for some retirees.</p>
<p>Zoosermom…the story is depressing…</p>
<p>According to this: </p>
<p>[Facebook’s</a> IPO: Who Gets Rich - Businessweek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>California is going to get $1.5 billion in tax revenue as a result of the Facebook IPO.</p>