One of the many memorable scenes featuring the late Peter Sellers as the bumbling French detective comes in the Revenge of the Pink Panther, when he disguises himself as a peg-legged Swedish sailor, complete with an inflatable rubber parrot on his shoulder.
Problem is the parrot leaks, requiring Clouseau to flap his arm to operate a pump to re-inflate the bird, which eventually pops off as too much air is put in.
The connection to the Chinese economy is that once again a set of softer-than-expected economic numbers has the market anticipating that the authorities will act to boost activity.
Like Clouseau’s parrot, every time the economy loses some air, the expectation is that it will be pumped up again and it will return to health.
Credit figures showed that the amount of money flowing into the Chinese economy fell to a six-year low in July, while growth in investment, retail sales and bank lending was short of the market consensus.
Iron ore imports rose 10.7pc from the previous month to the third-highest on record, but this was more likely because of a slump in prices rather than any strength in underlying demand.
The main risk for China is that the authorities give into the financial markets and provide more monetary stimulus, rather than accepting that re-aligning the economy to be more service-orientated and less capital investment intensive is likely to result in uneven growth across various sectors.
Inspector Clouseau manages to re-inflate his rubber parrot three times before it blows off his shoulder on the fourth attempt.
How many times can China re-inflate its economy with cheap money?
