Last month, subscribers to The Analyst's Accounting Observer received our report on the state of benefit plans in the S&P 500 Short version: they're in pretty good shape, but far from riskless. And we'll be monitoring them throughout the remainder of the year to assess the risks.

If you're an institutional investor and would like to take a free trial offer of the Accounting Observer, you're welcome to this report. Click here to register for the trial, and you can also register seven of your research comrades. Institutional investors only, please: if we can't find you in one of the major directories of investment research (StreetSight, BigDough), we won't honor your request.

The timing of that report was pretty fortunate: in March, the FASB proposed amping the disclosures about benefit plan assets. While we were working on the report, we got a first-hand look at the existing disclosures and their shortcomings in light of the market events of the past year. It gave us good feel for how the FASB's disclosures could benefit investors. The deadline for comments on the proposed FASB Staff Position was shortly after we completed the report, so I put together a comment letter of my own just in time for the deadline. It's available here for your reading.

The disclosures should be effective for the years ending after 12/15/08. I have no doubt that companies will vigorously oppose the proposal and at least try to stall for another year of grace. It's an iron rule of accounting standard-setting: the amount of corporate resistance is directly proportional to the amount of informational benefit a proposal will provide to investors. We'll see if it happens here.