I gotta theory!  With economic indicators weakening, the analysts study investment rates and intentions, international capital movements, industrial productivity, return on capital employed.  And occasionally, they take a sideways glance at "High Street spending", just to see how we (as shoppers) are reacting.

They have got it wrong.  It's the other way 'round.  Everything is driven by the High Street.  Over 70% of global demand is consumer demand, with the remainder accounted for by government spending. My own model is of an economy principally driven by "consumer" demand, with Government expenditure a supplementary and compensating factor.

"Consumer" is a much-maligned word, with overtones of excess, conspicuous and pointless expenditure.  But that is misplaced: it relates to everything we choose to do with our money - walk the hills, recycle our waste, play hockey, build a home extension, tend the garden, go to the theatre, drink cheap wine, take "drugs", learn the piano, collect bottle-tops, visit prostitutes, play Bingo - anything and everything.

And our propensity to consume lies at the heart of every modern economy.  It is of course limited by the amount of money we each have available to spend, or how much we can borrow - but that is a secondary factor.  What matters is whether or not we are minded to consume, rather than save.  And that propensity is determined, differently from country to country, by a thousand different factors -  my full theory is spelt out in a 1992 essay of mine.

I could test my theory by using a wrist-borne "MoodMeter".  It's like a wristwatch, but contains a small radio-transmitter.  It would be worn thousands of volunteers, throughout the country.  And when each volunteer felt good or bad or middling about his or her personal situation, they would record that on a scale of 0-10, from "feeling bad" to "feeling good" - whatever had generated that feeling - new grandchild, winning at golf, awful or beautiful weather, catching flu, Iraq explosions, another George Bush "Press Conference", losing weight, a floundering Charles Clarke, winning the Lottery or the local Bingo, planning a holiday, thinking about the Olympics 2012, or the Bali bomb, or the London bombings, or Princess Di - everything would be relevant, because I argue that everything is relevant.

The result would be a running commentary on public (and therefore "consumer") confidence.  It would not be unlike the audience-reaction measures used by political advisers to monitor the effect of each phrase, each gesture in a political speech.  Central transmitters would pick up this avalanche of feel-good and feel-bad factors, and assess the balance between the two.  If the balance were persistently negative, the economy would be heading for deterioration - and vice-versa.

• Do I have any entrepreneurs out there who might take up this idea?  I claim no rights for it, patent, registered design or otherwise...

...drop me a line

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