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Strategies & Market Trends : P&S and STO Death Blow's -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lee who wrote (14203)	11/7/2002 8:26:15 PM
From: ajtj99	Respond to of 30712

Steve, the pensions are in the union contract, so they can't mess with them. White collar people are in 401K's, so they don't have the pensions. The one change F might make is their pension fund assumptions for accounting purposes. That might be the reason for the 90-minute long explanation, as it would impact their balance sheet for the next couple of years at a minimum. They also might announce a special charge for this in order to avoid Regulation FD stuff and big earnings surprises. GM and Ford did the pension fund adjustments about 15-years ago, if memory serves, and their underfunded pension obligations resulted in the largest quarterly loss in US history at the time. The law had just changed to keep people from losing all their pensions in the event of a company bankruptcy.