Imagine you could look back over the history of mankind and explain all its economic nuances. Imagine if, better still, you could accurately forecast a range of future economic factors from gross domestic product growth and inflation to interest rates. And imagine if there was already a way to do this but it had largely been overlooked or misunderstood by the world's economists, central bankers and politicians.

According to David Foot, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Toronto, such feats are within our...