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.