Goldilocks is dead! No, it’s not a severely abridged version of the popular fairy tale for time-poor parents wanting to give their children a more grittily realistic view of the chances of living ‘happily ever after’ after being caught breaking and entering. Nor is it a pithy if premature obituary for the Chicago economist Diane Swonk who – despite arguably providing ample material in her own surname – has been nicknamed after the fairy tale character by CNBC’s Larry Kudlow. It’s actually a riposte, published this week, from HSBC Private Bank’s head of global strategy, Fredrik Nerbrand, to Salomon Brothers’ economist David Shulman who first coined the phrase ‘the Goldilocks economy’ back in 1992.

Shulman saw a parallel between western interest rates and inflation and Baby Bear’s porridge: not too hot, not too cold, just right. Nerbrand, whose Scandinavian roots might predispose him to a folksy Hans Christian Andersen view of economics, nonetheless sees a more grisly parable: the rapidly congealing porridge now tastes far from right (but before any readers write in, I realise The Three Bears was first written by Englishman Robert Southey, and not the Danish Andersen, nor the Swedish Nerbrand).