This past week has been punctuated by forecast after miserable economic forecast.
Forget New Year, new hope the overall tenor of what was said suggested we may have to wait until a new decade before the economy is properly back on its feet.
And the majority of experts now agree that things are going to get worse before they get better.
In Scotland alone there have been warnings over prospects from a raft of bodies, including Begbies Traynor, the Institute of Directors, Lloyds TSB and Baker Tilly.
However, perhaps the most worrying insight of all came from the latest Markit/CIPS Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI).
The data contained within the PMI is eagerly awaited by economists and market watchers and is seen as a true indicator of the health of the economy at large.
At 48.9 below the 50 needed to indicate growth within the economy December’s update did not make for good reading.
The services sector which accounts for tens of thousands of businesses and is the real powerhouse of the British economy was found to have contracted for the first time since late 2010.
Combined with mixed data on manufacturing and construction, the PMI research suggested the UK economy was actually in worse shape than previously had been thought.
The downbeat data which came just three months after the UK emerged from a second period of recession since the banking collapse has led to fears about the prospects for the UK in the medium-term.
However, the immediate concern is the dreaded triple dip (surely trip?) which would take the UK economy in uncharted waters of an unprecedented third consecutive period of recession.
As Messrs Cameron and Clegg set out their plans for the second half of this Parliament, the economic waters which they have been forced to navigate remain as choppy as ever and the swells just get greater day by day.
The medicine of austerity with which they are attempting to revive the patient is a long-term course of therapy and may or may not have the desired effect.
The economy is in dire need of a major economic stimulus, but it is difficult to see where it is going to come from as public and consumer spending mercilessly continues to be squeezed.
A humiliating third period of recession appears very much on the horizon an outcome that will do nothing for the UK’s standing on the international stage and further jeopardise the country’s triple-A credit rating.
The sad reality of that situation is that already burdened firms up and down the land will see their cost of borrowing increase and their likely client pool shrink at the same time.
The prevailing wind is an ill one and, with years of austerity still ahead, companies which wish to survive and prosper are having to be more careful than ever before about how they operate and the risk they take on.
The immediate years ahead for the business community look set be a case of battening down the hatches, working hard and doing more in the hope they can stay afloat until the economic sun begins to rise once more.
business@thecourier.co.uk