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I could be looking at the contrasting stock market fortunes of big pharma and big airlines in response to the swine flu outbreak.

I could reflect on the news from Boots the chemists that they are mulling a diversification into banking - just as Tesco is doing, and Virgin - using the power of a trusted brand and lots of retail presence to undercut those troubled big banks.

Or there's the demise of the Pontiac car brand, as part of General Motors' restructuring.

Instead, I'm thinking fat, weight, tubbiness and obesity.

Being built for comfort more than speed, the burning question is: can I pin the blame on Mrs Fraser?

This doesn't immediately look like the stuff of business and economy reporting, but my eye was caught by some research being presented at the Scottish Economic Society conference in Perth this week.

Once I'd got past "A time-varying indicator of effective monetary policy conservatism", "The optimal effort level of athletes in symmetric and asymmetric winner takes all-contests" and "Testing for non-normality of income distribution using a quantile modelling approach" (no, no, stick with this, it's quite interesting), the programme for tomorrow sees presentation of a paper on "The role of spouses in influencing the determinants of obesity".

The findings are that men are more likely to be obese as they move up the earnings scale.

This is probably because the supply of labour increases in relation to the rewards, substituting work for exercise and "other weight-maintaining activities".

In econo-speak, this means obesity may be a "normal good".

Not so with women, however. Heather Brown, the doctoral student at Sheffield University whose research has involved analysis of data from the British Household Panel Survey, reckons women are more affected than men by their spouses' attitudes to weight, eating and exercise.

And higher earnings for women seem related to improved weight control - or, to put it another way, conformity to social norms of what is a good weight.

But the most striking finding about women's obesity is that the chances of being seriously overweight are much more likely to be determined by whether they live in Scotland.

On this score, Scotswomen clearly outweigh all the other parts of the UK.

This has an important message for public health, particularly in deep fried Scotland - that campaigns to combat obesity would be better aimed at families and households rather than individuals.

And is Mrs Fraser to blame? No, after all that data-crunching, this looks like confirmation that I should eat better and exercise more.

Credit crunch, bank crisis and recession have raised young people's interest in economics, following serious decline brought on by, among other things, the subject's mathematical complexity.

So a lecturer from London Metropolitan University is telling the Scottish Economics Society of his plans for a way of grabbing his students' attention and making economics more accessible - teaching it through film.

Here's Gharardo Girardi's syllabus, and what the movies can teach:

1. Death of a Salesman - choice of profession, sense of self worth based on economic performance.

2. Grapes of Wrath - property rights, migration, trade unions.

3. Oliver Twist - economics of crime, economics of charities.

4. Rogue Trader / Wall Street - psychology of financial markets, "greed is good" business ethics.

5. Balkanizateur, a Greek film helping explain the efficiency of capital markets.

6. La Terra Trema - An Italian take on poverty and the risks of entrepreneurship.

7. St. Francis / Francis, God's Jester - two Italian flicks about the choice between wealth and poverty.

8. Mother India - Rural financial markets in poor countries.

9. Pride and Prejudice - dowries, economics of inheritance.

10. Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder) - Satyajit Ray's classic, teaching the economics of famine.

11. Robin Hood - on the morality of stealing from the rich or the state. Dr Girardi recommends the 1973 Walt Disney version.

Any other suggestions?