And now for a recession forecast...

Recession? The UK economy's worst-kept secret, totally unsurprising, tell me something I hadn't already worked out for myself.
That will be the reaction of many businesses to today's not-at-all shocking statistics.
Some will go even further: turn the over-excited TV news off, get over it and get on with it.
You can't ignore it, though. What is eye-catching about today's announcement is not the fact that we officially satisfy the statistical requirements for a particular type of economic event, but that the economy slowed so fast in such a short time.
Output in the UK – that's the value of how much we make and sell – fell 1.5% in the space of only three months.
A 1.5% fall may not sound that much on its own, but 1.5% of the total size of one of the most active economies in the Western world is still a thumping great load of business that didn't happen.
It's almost certain that the first three months of this year will see an even bigger fall.
Never mind the percentages anyway: they are made up of companies that didn't get the orders they'd hoped for, lost business they'd already got, and may be had to make people redundant as a result.
It is people that are being crunched by the lack of credit, not just order books.
The fact that not even the Governor of the Bank of England is able to say how long this might last tells you that the economy is now a passenger riding an inexorable wave. Government measures may soften how hard the wave hits but they won't stop it.
That wave will actually follow a fairly predictable course, but how long and how deep is the unknown factor.
We'll know when it's near the bottom because certain types of economic activity will pick up: if investors believe that the prices of shares are near the bottom they will start buying stakes in companies they think are going to do well when the economy grows again.
The same principle will apply in the housing market: as the rate of house price decline slows, buyers with access to money will start to make a move on the best properties, knowing that even a further short-term drop will be succeeded by a steady rise.
So at some stage you could have a perverse situation where there's bad news about business but a rising stock market.
But when will it pick up? Hands up – I dunno.
What I do know is that there's consistent anecdotal evidence that more people are sniffing around estate agents, which suggests that as soon as mortgage availability improves so will housing activity.
That could prompt housebuilders to go back on site again, which will boost the construction industry and those who service it. They'll take some persuading, though.
If house prices rise quickly that will have more to do with limited supply than a property bubble: don't expect your home to become a massively valuable asset for years.
Similarly, while banks will eventually start handing out loans (probably because the Bank of England will ultimately print more money and give it to them), don't expect them to spray money around even when things pick up.
They got too badly burnt for that.
As for the economy itself, you will know it is bottoming out when the UK's output (that's the figure the news channels have been frothing about today) isn't falling as fast as it was. At that point you'll start to hear some people forecasting when an upturn might happen.
Don't start straining your ears until the Autumn at the earliest