For several years, the Watch Report has reported regularly on the pending collision among ill-advised federal regulatory policy, the troubled financial state of super-regulated sectors like the automotive and airline industries, and the underfunding of both corporate pension plans and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

The nation moved several steps closer to that impending calamity over the last month.

General Motors kicked off the parade of news by getting rid of 30,000 North American jobs--announcing its intention to close nine plants in Michigan, Oklahoma, Ohio, and elsewhere during the next three years. This decision apparently came as a surprise to the United Auto Workers (UAW), which had granted $1 billion worth of pension and benefit concessions in the hope of staving off just such a retrenchment. . . .

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