How men’s pants predict economic crashes

Should you happen to spot me these days lurking outside a Calvin Klein boutique, notebook in hand, I assure you I have a serious purpose. I’m applying the method of the former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who relished statistical minutiae and believed that sales of men’s underpants – an item so out of sight that a chap could readily choose not to replace worn-out ones when he senses an economic pinch ahead – offer a reliable indicator of impending downturns.

That’s precisely the sort of trend we need to watch right now, when the Office for Budget Responsibility tells us to expect UK growth at 3.8 per cent this year and 1.8 per cent next year despite the crippling cost-of-living surge and the fear factor of war in Ukraine. In the Chancellor’s spring statement, those numbers came with this caveat: ‘The OBR stressed the “significant uncertainty” surrounding its forecasts.