Boom and Bust

With all the current wailing and gnashing of teeth regarding the Greek economy, we are being bombarded daily with figures, percentages, spreads, and so on. In an effort to dispel some of this gloom and doom, I think they ought to look at more entertaining economic figures. Starting with skirts.

The hem-line has in the past been proposed as an indicator of how well an economy is doing. The theory says that hem lines are directly proportional to economic growth. That is to say that in good times skirts are shorter. I suspect that a similar thing holds for necklines - the lower the better.


I think I know why this works - skimpier outfits require less material. This means that more money is being spent and fewer of our scarce natural resources used up. And all the extra profit made on clothes gets spent back into the economy, causing a financial chain reaction.

Another suggested barometer is the Mars Bar. This is said to give a good indication of inflation. Apparently governments can give up surveying households' shopping habits and monitoring thousands of prices every month and just pop down to their local newsagents to see how much a Mars Bar costs. The important thing to remember, though, is that it's the price per gram that matters. Those sneaky people at Mars have a habit of altering the size as well.

The Mars Bar in more prosperous times

Finally we come to men's underwear. It seems that someone has been through men's drawers and worked out that the older and more worn out they are, the worse the economy is doing. Although you have to wonder why someone ever wanted to conduct such a study, this is good news for those of us who don't usually wear women's clothes. All I need to do to help the economy is buy some new underwear. Unfortunately, this isn't top of my spending priorities right now - maybe I'll wait until things start to get better. Also, I hate shopping for clothes. Why couldn't they have chosen DVDs or Guinness? Maybe I'll do some research...