Nicole Mieth: Is a recession coming? Alan Greenspan says the answer is in men’s underwear

Alan Greenspan Got Underwear Fetish?

Former Federal Reserve head Alan Greenspan has a keen interest in men’s underwear. Not because he’s preoccupied with the evolving fashions of nether garments — rather, he sees underwear sales as a key economic predictor. Sounds weird, right? But it’s just one of the many strange ways experts try to predict booms and busts.

“He once told me that … the garment that is most private is male underpants, because nobody sees it except people in the locker room, and who cares?” longtime NPR correspondent Robert Krulwich said of Greenspan years ago. Those sales are usually stable, “so on those few occasions where it dips, that means that men are so pinched that they are deciding not to replace underpants.”

The men’s underwear index (yes, it exists) backs up Greenspan’s theory: US sales of men’s underwear fell significantly from 2007 to 2009, during the Great Recession, but gained steam again in 2010 as the economy recovered

Analysts are always searching for signs that might predict a downturn. Just as a stampede of animals fleeing to higher ground can be an early sign of a tsunami, the same rules can be applied to the state of the economy.It’s why there’s been so much chatter lately about inverted yield curves, or the phenomenon of short-term bond rates going higher than long-term yields. It’s thought to be a sign that recession is looming, and for good reason: It’s happened before each economic recession since the 1970s.But there are a number of less technical — and more fun — measures of economic downturn, and they don’t all revolve around boxers and briefs. Here are a few strange but semi-accurate ways economists track the health of the US economy.

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