Union bosses and their Democrat cronies are breathing a collective sigh of relief.  On Wednesday, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) gave them something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving and they must be positively giddy. As opposed to reality biting on December 15th, as was originally scheduled, FASB just threw a temporary lifeline to companies with union multi-employer pension fund liabilities.

Last month, we told you about the financial Armageddon that is looming for unions, unionized companies and Democrats. The date was set as December 15th for a new accounting rule that requires companies to more accurately account for the pension liabilities owed to union multi-employer pension. On Wednesday, FASB punted, giving those companies more time to keep their pension liabilities hidden, while allotting unions, as well as Democrats, more time to come up with some other solution to deal with their pension ponzi scheme:

Disclosures about an employer’s participation in a multiemployer plan. The September 2010 Exposure Draft, Compensation—Retirement Benefits—Multiemployer Plans (Subtopic 715-80): Disclosure about an Employer’s Participation in a Multiemployer Plan, had proposed that public entities would begin providing enhanced disclosures in financial statements for fiscal years ending after December 15, 2010, with a one-year deferral for nonpublic entities. The Board decided that a final standard will not be effective for the 2010 calendar year-end reporting period. It will decide on an effective date at a future meeting, after it has substantially concluded its redeliberations.

While FASB did not give a reason for the delay, some obvious political possibilities spring to mind:

• With the resounding “shellacking” that Democrats experienced on November 2nd, it looks less and less likely that the $165 billion union pension bailout bill would make it through the Senate (lame duck or not).
• FASB may be trying to stave off a shock to the stock market that liability transparency could cause once the unionized companies reveal the true nature of their liabilities.
• Lastly, FASB may be merely trying to give Democrats (and unions) time to try to convince Republicans to back a bailout, or work up some other political solution.

Whatever the case, although eventually there will be a reckoning with reality, Democrats and their union bosses have been given a gift for the Holidays.

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“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.”  Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

X-posted.

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