Yay!

Gee, are you getting the feeling that everybody at the top of the food chain is either a thief, a tool, or a fool? [To be fair, unless proven otherwise] First, we find that GM was looting its pension fund while it was gearing up for a bailout:

Details are emerging about how General Motors Corp.'s U.S. pension funds went from a $20-billion surplus at the end of 2007 to a $12.4-billion deficit 12 months later.

ewly released numbers show that the funds, which help support more than 650,000 Americans, were tapped for billions of dollars over the past year for employee buyout programs, benefit increases and as part of the UAW's retiree health care trust deal.

While pension experts have said using pension funds for headcount reduction is common in some industries, some said it also raises questions.

"To the extent it is consistent with the law, the question is: Is it really consistent with the promise?" asked Olivia Mitchell, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and executive director of the Pension Research Council.

"Workers deferred part of their compensation to get a pension later, and to the extent that salary deferral is going to somebody else, it's going to be a big disappointment," she said.

Ya think?

In February, GM Chief Financial Officer Ray Young said the company needs to examine its pension funding situation.

"We've made the assumption that the pension funding in the future will be financed by debt," Young said.

Well, that's good news.

Retirees are concerned, however.

"They robbed it blind to pay off the people to get them to leave," said Paul Heller, a GM salaried retiree from Washington, Mich. "I've got a retiree club that's absolutely sick about it."

Gerald Patrick, a salaried worker from Shelby Township, was equally worried. "I'm very concerned about this," he said. "It's something I don't think they should be doing. I thought our pension funds were protected."

And Patrick had every right to think that. Really, the only issue here is that the GM execs aren't even competent thieves: There's a paper trail. With the banksters, we still don't know where our two trillion went, or what it was spent on. So the GM folks really need to get some tips from Hank Paulson's golfing buddies, don't they?

It's called a kleptocracy because it kelpts....