No one's threatening the overgenerous pensions that heaven, er, the state has guaranteed, Mer says.

FORBES: Magazine Article

And government debt is rising due to overgenerous civil-service pay and benefits (including index-linked pay rises twice a year).

ECONOMIST: Charlemagne

Relational Investors, a hedge fund, worked with CalSTRS, California's state pension fund for teachers, to fight against overgenerous executive pay at Occidental Petroleum, an oil company.

ECONOMIST: Shareholder activism

All of which may seem overgenerous, particularly since the state's voting rights will be capped at 75% of the total less than its likely financial stake in the business.

ECONOMIST: Dismantling Royal Bank of Scotland

But the euro zone's real problem is a crisis of competitiveness, a legacy of decades of entitlements, privileges, overgenerous welfare systems, inefficient bureaucracies, unnecessary and burdensome regulations and high taxes.

WSJ: Merkel Still Waiting for a Thatcher Moment

In the longer term, however, it is still more vital that Germany, along with most of Europe, attacks the high taxes, overgenerous welfare benefits, onerous labour-market restrictions and red tape that are choking growth in output and jobs.

ECONOMIST: Germany stalls

In its own report into the controversy, published on 2 November, Ofqual concluded that pressure on schools in England to hit targets led to overgenerous marking of coursework by teachers and that, as a result, external examiners had to raise grade boundaries in the June exams.

BBC: Heads challenge Ofqual to publish all GCSE grade research

Although last year's recession hit Germany hard, its economy is in much better shape now than it was a decade ago a point that should be noted in France, where President Nicolas Sarkozy has taken to railing against outsourcing, and in southern Europe, which bends over backwards to preserve overgenerous wages and restricted labour markets.

ECONOMIST: Germany