wait...was I talking about it? No, but I'm going to.

I think the topic covered in this story may get hotter and hotter: huge shortfalls in airline pension funds.

I was recently told the story of someone who lost $527,000 from a pension in an airline that went bankrupt.

But this story is even neater: Seems that the chairman of Northwest Airlines, Gary Wilson, was aware of the $5.7 billion (as my astronomy professor would say, that's billion with a b) shortfall in Northwest's pension fund. That's the number federal pension insurers calculated when Northwest flew into bankruptcy court.

The rest of us poor schmoes had to rely on Northwest's numbers from its most recent financial filings prior to the bankruptcy, which said its pension was only short by $3.8 billion. But, hey, what's $3.8 billion between an American corporation and its loyal, longtime employees?

Anyway, ol' Gary (who's still chairman at Northwest and also a director at the Disney corporation), knew what the real number was. Completely coincidentally, I'm sure, he sold 85% of his Northwest holdings in the past year.

The real number has created what is described in the article as a "huge claim" for the U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation in the bankruptcy proceeding. Which is going to make the shares that people bought from Gary Wilson basically worthless.

But, wait, it's not just the unlucky buyers of Gary Wilson's old shares. When I saw "U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation," I had this deep pit of fear in my stomach that with a name that catchy, I had to be a shareholder.

You guessed it. It's a government agency. Congratulations! We're going to court to try to cut our losses because Gary Wilson and friends were $1.9 billion off on their math.

Talk about yer fuzzy math.

Oh, and here's the real beautiful part of this (beautiful if you're a CEO trying to sell stock from your company which is short by a billiion or two): The PBGC cannot disclose the estimate Northwest gives it. Northwest, however, could have. But they chose not to.

(Perhaps because Gary might not have been able to unload 85% of his stock on unsuspecting schmucks.)

The article draws a parallel between Gary Wilson and a woman by the name of Ellen Saracini, who did not have access to the pension fund information. It would have been useful to her when she settled with the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, and they reduced her settlement by the value of her husband's full pension fund. (He flew for United, and was flying the plane that was taken over and ultimately crashed into the World Trade Center south tower.)

Guess what. She's not getting her full pension fund.

But Gary's prolly getting a new BMW.