Mary Williams Walsh again points to the obvious -- obvious to her at least.

In an echo of the savings and loan industry collapse of the 1980s, the federal agency that insures company pensions is facing a possible cascade of bankruptcies and pension defaults in the airline industry that some experts fear could lead to another multibillion-dollar taxpayer bailout.

The S&L bailout spawned many court cases by the Resolution Trust Corporation. Oh yeah - - - lets not forget that Uncle Sam used the problems as an opportunity to help Bank of America and other big banks to get help (through asset value guarantees) in swallowing their smaller competitors. (Never mind the BCCI stuff to boot.) The $100,000 per deposit guarantee their got used only per bank, allowing Deposit Brokers, to spread $100,000 dollars to each of up to 9,800 different banks with full guarantees on behalf of each customer. Through pooling of the assets of many big investors the deposit brokers could inject tens of millions of dollars at a time into a bank -- like Charles Keating's bank or even one in Colorado at the time baby Bush played with the banking business.

Just as one person's trash can be another's treasure the pension bailout will not be a loser for everyone. It should be noted up front here that the unionized companies with generous pensions will likely be on the chopping block first.

Congress in the 1980's refused to limit the federal guarantee to $100,000 per person, cumulative for all their holdings in any bank where ever located -- relying on SS # to avoid duplicate guarantees. Congress still has not fixed the 9,800 multiplier for the $100,000 limit. The $100,000 limit is really closer to a $980,000,000 dollar limit on deposit guarantee. This freaky non-sense math was essential to Bank of America getting its subsidies when taking over banks, as an ongoing operation, seemingly over-night.

For the real thinkers – can you see the relationship between the killing of local banks to accept deposits of your savings and the explosion of tax deferred retirement accounts managed by trustees that for all practical purposes refuse, by law, to invest in small businesses traditionally served by local banks?