The biggest contributors to the loss were the pension defaults of Bethlehem, National, and LTV steel companies, accounting for $7.1 billion.

Executive director Steven Kandarian said "a number of large highly underfunded plans" that might require being taken over are being closely monitored. While Kandarian did not name any companies, some airlines companies are certain to be high on the list, including bankrupt U.S. Airways, which has already announced it will end its pension plan for pilots, and United Airlines.

The agency says it has the funds to keep making pension payments now due because it has $25.4 billion in assets. But the payments now being made are larger than projected and will increase after a record year of corporate bankruptcies. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. was set up in 1974 by the government and is financed by employers who pay insurance premiums.

Because of declining stock market prices, among other factors, many companies are finding that their pension fund assets have fallen below 90 percent of the amount needed to cover future pension payments, requiring companies to make additional contributions to pension funds.

To offset making the required contributions, corporations are now asking the government to change formulas to calculate pension values that would reduce pension deficits on paper and cut down the billions companies would have to kick in to keep pension fund assets above the 90 percent mark.

If the government doesn’t act, "it will be a disaster," Janice Gregory, an official of the big-business lobbying outfit Erisa Industry Committee, told the New York Times. "You will have plans that have to freeze benefits. You will have plans that have to terminate because they don’t have cash," she said.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. covers conventional pension benefit plans that offer workers a set monthly payment and does not cover 401(k)s. The pensions of some 44 million workers are insured by the corporation.  
 
 
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