Another Taxpayer Bailout For The Millennials? Unrelated -- Another Huge Layoff At HP -- 55,000 And Rising -- October 7, 2014

Posted earlier, but it's a big story that I was unaware of.

Motorola and Bristol-Myers Squibb cast off billions in pension burdens. So, how do they do it?

Motorola Solutions Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. are the latest companies to cast off billions in pension burdens, fueling a trend that could weaken the government’s ability to protect the payouts other employers have promised millions of retired workers.

The two companies recently disclosed separate deals that will shift a combined $4.5 billion in pension obligations to insurer Prudential Financial Inc., PRU -0.66% which will take over paying benefits to 38,000 retirees. The deals are good for the two companies’ balance sheets.

What’s more, joining the dozens of companies that have shed their pension plans lets Motorola and Bristol-Myers stop paying millions in yearly fees to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the government pension insurer. The problem: the growing number of these pension dropouts threatens the agency’s resources for insuring the plans of those that remain in the system.

“This has identified a fundamental flaw with the pension system,” said Brad Belt, a former executive director of the PBGC. “Inevitably, there’s going to be a taxpayer bailout [of the PBGC] in the future.”

There's a lot of information in that linked article.

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Another Huge Layoff At HP

Business Insider is reporting:

As HP cleaves itself in two, the company will also trim another 5,000 employees from its payroll.

And even that won't be the end of a massive multiyear layoff that grows bigger every few months, HP CEO Meg Whitman essentially told CNBC's Dan Farber on Monday.

HP first announced its layoffs plans in 2012. Back then, HP said it would cut 27,000. By June of this year, it had doubled the target, to 50,000, with 36,000 employees already gone.

On Monday, it bumped up the new layoff target, yet again, to 55,000.

Even so, HP remains an enormous employer, with over 330,000 employees worldwide, and that means that when HP reorganizes itself, it will likely make even more cuts.

55,000 and rising.

Five Feet High and Rising, Johnny Cash