Planet Business

Image of the week: The Golden Mao

It’s not every day that a 36.6m (120 ft) gold-painted figure of a man gets erected in the middle of farmland in central China’s Henan province. Well, we presume it isn’t. According to Chinese state media, several entrepreneurs and local residents had a whip-round and got together nearly 3 million yuan (€420,000) to build this, ahem, interesting tribute to former Chinese leader Mao Zedong. But their giant concrete and steel effigy did not last long. Shortly after visitors took the first selfies at the feet of “Mega Mao”, online commentators began heaping on the ridicule, pointing out that it might be better to use the money to help the impoverished region – not laud a man who was responsible for the death of millions. Oh, and it didn’t much look like him anyway. Mao’s hands and feet were soon chopped off and his head covered in a black cloth. It couldn’t happen to a nicer statue.

In Numbers: Creaming off

3.5 million Number of pots of fresh Avonmore cream sold by Glanbia Consumer Foods Ireland in December 2015 – a 24 per cent rise on the same month in 2014.

550,000 Number of Cognac-laced Christmas puddings (ewww) sold by British supermarket Sainsbury’s over the festive period – sounds like the kind of thing that demands a blob of whipped cream.

£6 million Value of sales lost by Cadbury Creme Egg exceeded this figure last year, according to a study by analysts IRI for the Grocer magazine, after owners Mondelez changed the recipe.

The Lexicon: Anti-goldilocks

"The bears have killed Goldilocks" was the title of this week's "sell everything" note from RBS analyst Andrew Roberts who holds hardening "anti-goldilocks" views. So poised are stock markets on the verge of collapse, he wrote, that investors should heed its old mantra: this is about "return of capital, not return on capital". But what does "anti-goldilocks" mean? Goldilocks was the shameless delinquent who broke into the bears' house (not market bears, but actual bears) and tried their porridge until she found one at a temperature that was "just right". Accordingly, a goldilocks economy is one that is neither hot enough to be inflationary nor cold enough to be recessionary, but just right. An anti-goldilocks economy, however, is one that's neither cold enough to support stimulus measures, nor hot enough to sustain growth. Few central bankers want it for breakfast.

Getting to know: Albert Edwards

Albert Edwards is variously known as an "uber bear", a "perma bear" and an economist employed by Societe Generale. Like RBS, Edwards believes that stock markets are on the verge of a 2008-style crash, but the numbers he put on his prediction are stark. The S&P 500 index, he says, will plunge 75 per cent as equity markets "reap the whirlwind" of years of quantitative easing by the US Federal Reserve. He's no fan of its chair, Janet Yellen, believing December's interest rate hike came far too late, and he's not exactly keen on the European Central Bank or the Bank of England either. His forecast now is for a full 1930s-style depression, or "carnage". But he doesn't expect anyone to listen to his non-mainstream views. "I realise most people think I am talking utter garbage but I'm used to that."

The list: Heading for Davos

North Korea, the entire country, has had its invitation to the annual World Economic Forum/elite skiing get-together in the Swiss town of Davos revoked on account of being too keen on the nuclear button. But who is Davos-bound from January 20th-23rd for this year’s shindig?

1 Enda Kenny and Michael Noonan But with all that general election business, Kenny is unlikely to have too much time for networking on the slopes.

2 Prime ministers in general The prime ministers of Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, oh, and Greece’s Alexis Tsipras are all on the list.

3 Denis O’Brien The billionaire is a Davos regular.

4 Sheryl Sandberg The Facebook chief operating officer will lead the tech company’s delegation.

5 Men Only 18 per cent of the attendees will be women, which is obviously bad news for the queue to the gents toilets and for lots of other reasons too.