Everyone else makes forecasts at this time of year. So here's my prediction: we are heading for an absolute stinker of a recession. The reason is not the imminent war, or the alarming slump in confidence on the Continent, or the shaky American economy, though all these will have an effect. It is the mighty British consumer.
Sooner or later this heroic figure will have to capitulate. For the past decade, British consumers have been on a magnificent spree, spending more than they earn, bankrolled by an unprecedentedly liberal banking system.
Even now, the profligacy goes on. British car-dealers have just reported the best ever year for sales and Majestic Wine the other day reported selling a cork-popping 480,000 bottles of champagne over Christmas.
Underpinning it all, however, have been three sweet delusions.
Delusion number one is that we still think we are getting richer. Our pay packets may not be growing much, but our assets seem to be. House prices are still booming, and as for those strange goings-on in the stock market, well that has nothing to do with us, has it?
The second delusion is that borrowing is almost costless. With interest rates at a 40-year low, the expense of servicing debt seems marvellously easy, especially to those who lived through the double-digit base rate years of the 1970s and 1980s.
Delusion number three is that we will never grow old and so need not save. If by some unlucky twist of fate we wake up one day and find ourselves aged 65, some kind soul will surely rally round and keep us in tea and cruise holidays.
Each of these till-jangling delusions is starting to flicker around the edges. House-price growth is slowing and reversing in some parts of the south-east. Eventually prices will come to a nationwide standstill, at the very least - and could easily fall. Moreover, the sliding stock market does affect millions of us, through pension values, long-term savings products and ISAs. Monday's shock warning from Britannic Assurance - that it will not pay any annual bonus to its one million policyholders - is a taste of things to come.
The brutal truth that debt is not costless may take longer to sink in, but it is there all the same. No longer does inflation erode the burden of repaying the principal. Servicing the debt may be easy, but ultimately it still has to be repaid. At some point, the British public - already in hock to the tune of £800bn - will say "enough". The latest official borrowing figures suggest we may already be reaching that point.
As for our perennial pensions blindness, even that could be cured. After the barrage of front-page headlines about the imminent pensions crisis, few people can be unaware that they probably need to save more for their retirement.
Consumption is by far the biggest component in the economic cake. Consumers only have to divert 2p or 3p in the pound from spending - into the piggy bank or towards debt repayment - to tip the economy into a deep downturn, one that even the big increases planned for public spending could not offset. Meanwhile, business leaders are in no mood to recycle those savings into economy-boosting capital investment.
Having predicted a nasty recession, I won't pin myself down as to the timing. Usually, economic change happens in slow motion, but occasionally the financial gods press the fast-forward button - and then sentiment, behaviour and prices alter in an instant. All I can say is that the longer the blizzard takes to arrive, the icier it will be.
Company profitability is at a nine-year low, the Office for National Statistics has told us. No surprise there. But one sector of the economy has entirely escaped the chill: oil. The oil companies in Britain basked in the high-octane glow of a 32 per cent return on capital. To put that in perspective, manufacturers achieved just 7 per cent.
This is largely down to the high price of crude. When the black stuff fetches more than $30 a barrel, as it currently does, even the most hapless, inefficient oil company makes money hand over fist.
As western forces prepare for an attack on Baghdad, the price of crude will almost certainly go higher still. Analysts predict it could spike at $40 or $50 a barrel, certainly for the duration of hostilities.
That will feed through into petrol prices, and will go straight to the bottom line of companies such as BP and Shell, whose profits last year were, together, £13.4bn before tax.
As Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, grapples with a ballooning budget deficit, and wonders how much extra the war is going to cost the Exchequer, it might cross his mind that a windfall tax on the oil companies would be fiscally useful, politically harmless and morally incontestable.
Patrick Hosking is deputy City editor of the London Evening Standard
