Another excellent article on economic insecurity by Peter Gosselin:

How Bedrock Promises Of Security Have Fractured Across America - Los Angeles Times: For more than two decades, Lowell Seibert made a living driving piles and erecting machinery across the industrial Midwest. But with mortgage payments, college tuitions and the prospect of retirement looming, Seibert traded in his outdoor job 14 years ago and went to work for the Packard Electric division of auto parts giant Delphi Corp. He was offered $19 an hour (now $30), good benefits and, perhaps most important, the promise of a solid pension and old-age health insurance. "Heavy construction is a rush," he said of his old position, "but Packard was a sure thing."

Or so it seemed until Oct. 8.

That's when Delphi Chief Executive Robert S. "Steve" Miller, citing global competition and crippling "legacy costs," ushered the $28.6 billion-a-year company into one of the largest industrial bankruptcies in U.S. history. In short order, Miller called for slashing workers' compensation by almost two-thirds, threatened to void the company's union contracts, and hinted broadly that he would follow the playbook he had used elsewhere of pushing responsibility for paying the firm's pensions to the federal government and dumping its retiree health benefits altogether....

For Seibert, 56, the spillover was immediate. That's because in addition to his pension, he had been socking away money in a company-administered savings account similar to a 401(k). Unfortunately, he had directed almost all of its $84,000 balance into Delphi stock. When the company declared bankruptcy, its shares plunged from a 12-month high of $9 to 33 cents, all but wiping out his account.

The result: "I'm not going to be retiring anytime soon."...

ERISA did a very bad thing when it made it so easy for people to put their 401(k) money into undiversified portfolios.