Pensions in the US are backed by the pension benefit guaranty corporation https://www.pbgc.gov/ https://www.pbgc.gov/. Which despite the "corporation" in the n

Pensions in the US are backed by the pension benefit guaranty corporation https://www.pbgc.gov/ https://www.pbgc.gov/. Which despite the "corporation" in the name, is just another government agency tasked with dealing with failed pensions. Sort of the pension version of the FDIC. edit: And to add to this, the funding of the pension is required to be a separate pot of cash from the operation of the business. There were a number of companies in the 1990's/etc that got in a lot of legal trouble for using their pensions as financing for the business.