Rarely discussed, corporate and government pensions, are barreling towards disaster. For some reason, there is an assumption that what ails the government, with their $20 trillion in debt, isn’t something that ordinary folk need to worry about. After all, times are good and corporate stock prices are near record highs, people are working, and even wages have been increasing.

But beneath the shiny veneer is a sickness that is festering, a red nightmare of underfunded pensions, both on a government and corporate level. They menace over markets like an explicit threat, a promise of crisis that is both maturing and spoiling with equal violence.

Former Dow component, and once upon a time great American company, has an underfunded pension of $31 billion and a business that is in the midst of restructuring. The stock has been cut in half over the past year.

But at a time when General Electric Co. is facing what amounts to an existential crisis, a $31 billion deficit in its pension plan may complicate any turnaround that involves a breakup of the 126-year-old icon of American capitalism. Divvying up the obligations won’t be easy.

After all, GE owes benefits to at least 619,000 people. And retirees aren’t the only ones at risk. Ideally, breaking up a conglomerate as sprawling as GE would unlock value for shareholders, who have seen their stock fall 40 percent since the CEO took the reins from Jeffrey Immelt in August. Stronger divisions wouldn’t be dragged down by weaker ones, and each business would stand on its own financially.

Here’s a nice genteel list of the top corporate pension deficits in America. The municipal deficit is far more insidious, $6 trillion in the hole.

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