Stuffed bear photobombs Saxo Bank’s Ole Hansen’s crude talk

“What’s behind crude’s dramatic decline?” says the tweet from Saxo Bank’s Ole Hansen, but those reading it found another question more pertinent. “What’s behind you?” 

 

The silhouette of a rather angry looking bear is pretty hard to ignore, despite the fact Hansen is clearly managing to do so. Luckily, the creature wasn’t on a gory rampage in the bank; it’s merely the stuffed bear on its trading floor. There’s also a bull, naturally. But even for those in the know it’s hard not to do a double take.

 

Now, back to crude oil and its dramatic decline…

 

https://twitter.com/Ole_S_Hansen/status/496658667765501952

 

■ The Bank of England knows as well as the next mouthpiece how using cultural references to explain complex situations can be really helpful. Mark Carney has taken to it like a duck to water with his barrage of sporting references, and now it’s chief economist Andy Haldane’s turn. A report he published yesterday in the Central Banking Journal is titled, “Halfway up the stairs” – more than a passing nod to Winnie the Pooh creator A.A.Milne’s poem of the same name. “Halfway up the stairs, Isn’t up, And it isn’t down. It isn’t in the nursery, It isn’t in the town,” goes the first stanza and paragraph of the report – a description of central banks today, says Haldane. Indeed. We also like his previous description of SME lending as “The Ugly Duckling”. Can we suggest The Very Hungry Caterpillar next as metaphor for the economy?

 

■ The marketing team at Co-Operative Food must have been very pleased when they came up with the latest epicurean portmanteau. “It started with the cronut and the brookie [that’s the love child of a croissant and doughnut, and of a brownie and cookie in case you’re unfamiliar] now we’ve gone savoury with the SASTIE!” it announced joyfully, as if it’d discovered the Higgs boson all over again. This latest invention is a sausage and a pasty. Which most people have pointed out, is something we’ve had for quite a while – a sausage roll. “What’s next?” continued the supermarket’s message? Yes, indeed, what is next? The sauseeg? A seamless combo of sausage and egg? Oh, wait, that’s a Scotch egg.