For those not of a literary bent, William Micawber is a fictional character from the Charles Dickens’s novel, David Copperfield.
He’s well known here, even for those who’ve not read the book, mainly for his ‘Micawberism’ based on his observation:
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
I wonder what he’d have made of the following totally bewildering statistics:
China’s trade surplus in November (2010) widened to $22billion and exports to the USA were up 32.2%
In September (2010) the US trade deficit was $44billion.