A big week in parliament for the Jacob Rees-Mogg committee (formerly known as the Treasury select committee), which will again be grilling one of its favourite targets: economic forecasters.

First up on Tuesday comes Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which last Thursday said that Brexit really means British workers facing the longest pay squeeze in 70 years. The following day will see Robert Chote, chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, whose organisation also had a run-out last week, when it predicted the UK economy would slow next year and inflation would rise.

None of which is likely to have gone down terribly well with Rees-Mogg, the flag-bearer of the Tories’ Eurosceptic wing, who has shot to fame this year by baiting Bank of England governor Mark Carney as a Remainer.

To say that the Rees-Mogg demeanour tends towards the traditional is to recklessly underplay the situation, although even his critics concede his entertainment value.

The old Etonian former fund manager was once accused of going to bed in double-breasted pyjamas and, at the 1997 general election, stood as the Tory candidate for the solidly Labour seat of Central Fife. He attracted ridicule – by canvassing with his nanny.

A philosophical take on the trials of Topps Tiles

“Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.” Given that next week will be the 2,058th anniversary of the death of Roman philosopher Cicero, it’s too much of a stretch (even for this column) to suggest that the great orator foresaw the role of the financial analyst – however compelling the circumstantial evidence may be.

Still, for as long as the trade of analyst has existed, its members have attempted to illustrate how much life there is in those wise words. Take Topps Tiles, whose shares have dropped almost 50% this year. Despite that, the company’s supporters have been harder to dislodge than a 30-year-old installation of one of its products. Peel Hunt rated the shares a buy in January (at about 150p), when they were worth almost twice as much as now, and has reiterated that view six times during 2016. Cantor Fitzgerald, Berenberg and Liberum also persisted in their error – remaining positive on the company all the way down.

So, aside from admitting to a costly mistake, is there any way out of the mess? Well, the retailer reports numbers this week – so it’ll be prayers to Jupiter all round.

Why confidence can be a tricky matter

Consumer confidence has been holding up pretty well following the EU referendum – rather defying gloomy expectations of a slump and giving further ammunition to those claiming that Remainers over-egged the risks of a Brexit vote.

Last month, GfK’s consumer confidence index, which assesses respondents’ outlook for the next 12 months, decreased by two points to -3, ending a revival since June’s Brexit vote that pushed the index up to -1 from a low of -12. We get the latest numbers on all this on Wednesday.

Last time, the survey also found that plans to purchase big-ticket items were not being delayed. That seems like good news – it’s an area often thought to show the first signs of a slowdown – but like almost everything on Brexit, you can use the figures to argue whichever way you want.

So confidence to buy expensive items could mean everybody really is feeling chipper and Brexit is no big deal. Or it could mean that the referendum-induced slump in the pound is going to send prices soaring, so we’re all really getting our big purchases in before the arrival of a nasty bout of inflation. So it could be either – or neither. Let’s be honest: no one really has a clue what’s going to happen next.