You don't seem to be saying that pension plans aren't underfunded, but that companies adequately funded their pension plans based on generally accepted guidelines. That may be the case, but it could be argued that those guidelines were inadequate or had so much wiggle room that it permitted companies to underfund their pension plans year after year and still say they were meeting their obligations. Many pension plans have assumed an unrealistic rate of return, which permitted them to contribute less than was needed to insure their pension plans were adequately funded. Many corporations, despite record profits, have underfunded their pension plans. Since it wasn't an immediate problems corporate boards just avoided the problem by generally ignoring it. Take IBM, for example. IBM's pension plan has obligations of $106.1 billion, it has assets of $91.7 billion. IBM could have put more into its pension plan to insure that it didn't have a $14 billion gap, but it would rather use that money towards its goal of an EPS of $20 in 2015.