Reuters: Ticking Sound May Be Your Pension Fund

"...The sad truth is the companies will have to sweep up much of their already pencil-thin earnings to cover pension shortfalls.

"Credit Suisse First Boston estimates that a whopping 325 of the 360 companies in the S&P 500 index that have defined pension funds will have shortfalls this year."

Most companies have underfunded their funds, have too high an investment return built into their statements, and will have to pull money out of earnings to make up differences. This has not been acknowledged except for a couple commentators noting all rallies so far, including this one, have been on beating poor earnings estimates and not on "good" earnings.