Mr Bewley argues that monitoring workers' performance is usually so tricky that firms rarely rely on coercion and financial carrots alone as motivators.

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Assistant United States attorneys in two different federal districts have pushed the FBI to investigate concealment, coercion and financial mismanagement in parts of the church but have got nowhere.

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Whether it is by coercion by the financial markets or ahead of the inevitable day of reckoning is only marginally relevant.

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As for the regions, officials waver between severity (threatening to grab financial control from the worst offenders) and claims that they can meet their deficit targets without coercion.

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