Hospitals are great fodder for vulture investors because they are typically overstaffed and cash-rich.

FORBES: Cerberus' Medicine Didn't Work For Chrysler But Could For Weak Hospitals

Governments have bought social peace by pouring cash into overstaffed, loss-making sugar companies.

ECONOMIST: Sickly, but it could revive

But recovery is also more likely to be delayed if weak firms in overstaffed industries are too slow to shed workers.

ECONOMIST: Europe's economy

With vast, hugely overstaffed branch networks and far weaker balance sheets, cutting costs and instituting a commercial credit-culture will be a gigantic task.

ECONOMIST: Chinese banks

All that pretty talk at presentations organized by underwriters quickly disappeared in a haze of restructurings and admissions that the company was overstaffed and expanding imprudently.

FORBES: Do they know something you don't know?

Ever-swelling numbers of school-leavers pour on to the job market but find an already overstaffed public sector and a corporate world that prefers to hire foreigners.

ECONOMIST: The Gulf: Young, rich, idle, like it or not | The