Jeebus, even Business Week gets it:

JPMorganChase, Citi, Cerberus, and Morgan Stanley are among the firms lobbying Washington to let them take over and run corporate pension funds

The folks who brought you the mortgage mess and the ensuing hedge fund blowups, busted buyouts, and credit market gridlock have another bold idea: buying up and running troubled corporate pension plans. And despite the subprime fiasco, some regulators may soon embrace Wall Street’s latest scheme.

They call it an investment vehicle because it’s designed to drive off with your money.

In preparation for that moment, the world’s biggest big investment banks, insurers, hedge funds, and private equity shops have been quietly laying the groundwork for such deals over the past year. They would be a big prize for Wall Street. The $2.3 trillion pension honey pot has $500 billion in “frozen plans” that are closed to new employees and whose benefits are capped, including those at IBM, Hewlett Packard, Verizon, and Alcoa. And that figure could triple by 2012, according to consulting firm McKinsey. By managing those troubled plans, Wall Street also gains entrée to an appealing set of customers to whom it can sell a broad array of fee-generating products.

Indeed, it’s all about making sure the brokers get a new source of fees.

Can anyone see a problem with this?

But the gambit to turn pensions into for-profit enterprises raises troubling questions. Critics, including some on Capitol Hill, worry that financial firms don’t have workers’ best interest at heart, which would put some 44 million current and future retirees at risk.

You’re kidding!

Naturally, our tribunes of the people in Congress will prevent this from happening.