What is more, household savings remain buoyant by past standards, giving plenty of headroom to keep spending even as real incomes get squeezed by rising inflation. Around 60pc of the UK economy is accounted for by household spending. Only if this begins to suffer are you likely to see a UK recession.

The real killer when it comes to economic growth is therefore that deadly combination of rising unemployment and rising interest rates, the latter further eating into disposable incomes via higher mortgage servicing costs. 

Once people start to worry about their jobs, they tighten their belts and spend less, a phenomenon that the economist John Maynard Keynes referred to as the “paradox of thrift”. What is morally desirable on an individual basis becomes economically undesirable if it is practised on a mass basis. Your spending is someone else’s job.

For now, however, there is little evidence of this happening, even if recent surveys have pointed to a marked fall in consumer confidence, prompted no doubt by the murderous antics of Tzar Putin.

Another slightly worrying detail in the data lies in the latest money and credit statistics. Net new mortgage lending fell slightly last month. Households continued to add to deposits in banks and building societies, suggesting they may not feel quite so confident about prospects for the economy as policymakers had hoped.

It may be a mistake to assume that households will use savings accumulated during the pandemic, when much spending ceased, to smooth their outgoings through the coming cost of living squeeze. As I say, the jobs market is crucial; once that begins to crack, it’s time to head for the hills and Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, would need urgently to start bringing those promised tax cuts forward.

There is one other concerning signal in the mix, though it applies more to the US than to Britain – a so-called “inverted yield curve”. This occurs when the rate of return on longer dated government debt falls below that of shorter dated maturities, and is a comparatively rare occurrence.

This is more than just superstitious mumbo-jumbo, for an inverted yield curve reflects a genuine concern that interest rates will be lower in future than they are now. The bet is essentially this – that today’s spike in inflation will prove temporary, with the more potent concern soon becoming that of low or negative growth.

However, I wouldn’t at this stage read too much into it; we know that short term interest rates will be rising rapidly this year, but it is not yet clear they will push us into recession. An inversion also tends to be a better indicator of recession in the US than it is in Britain, where the yield curve inverted in the late 2010s but without an immediate subsequent recession.

And so, the question to which we all want an answer: will there be a UK and/or global recession this year? It hurts to hug the consensus, but the consensus is more often right than wrong, and you wouldn’t on balance go against the grain right now. 

Next year and the year after are a different matter, but then making a prediction just as far as the end of next week is hard enough these days.