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Corporations plundering their employee benefit plans? Naaaaaw...say it ain't so:

For nearly a decade, Ms. Schultz and her colleagues have been rooting through the minutiae of accounting regulations, government filings and corporate retirement plans to expose how many of the largest American companies have systematically plundered their employees pension funds, at once robbing their workers of hard-won benefits and enriching their own profits. Her work has led to Congressional hearings, to a Washington investigation or two and to numerous journalism awards.

Now, inevitably, comes the book. In "Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit From the Nest Eggs of American Workers." Ms. Schultz herds all her journalistic cattle into a single corral, laying out by what any measure is a damning indictment of the broken pension promises too many American corporations have made to their workers.

The following goodies are detailed as Ms. Schultz reveals how companies:

* Siphon billions of dollars from their pension plans to finance downsizings and sell the assets in merger deals * Overstate the burden of rank-and-file retiree obligations to justify benefits cuts while simultaneously using the savings to inflate executive pay and pensions * Hide their growing executive pension liabilities, which at some companies now exceed the liabilities for the regular pension plans * Purchase billions of dollars of life insurance on workers and use the policies as informal executive pension funds. When the insured workers and retirees die, the company collects tax-free death benefits *Preemptively sue retirees after cutting retiree health benefits and use other legal strategies to erode their legal protections.

Just a little holiday reading for your upcoming vacation!

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