Metaphorical Merv

Mervyn King unfurled a mast of metaphors this morning. ‘We are navigating through turbulent waters, with the risk of a storm heading our way from the continent,’ he said. ‘We don’t know when the storm clouds will move away.’ The eurozone, he said, is ‘tearing itself apart’.
 
So poetic was his language — a rare gift in a central banker — that it almost made one forget the painfully prosaic nature of his facts and figures. Inflation, already at target-busting levels, will be much stronger than the Bank initially envisaged, remaining above 2.5 per cent for the rest of the year. That’s almost a whole percentage point higher than its February forecast. The Bank also slashed its growth forecast to 0.8 per cent for 2012 and 2 per cent for 2013, from 1.2 per cent and 3 per cent respectively.
 
Even then, economists say these new GDP predictions may be too optimistic, and they predict another