For 2010, when Britain is likely to hold an election, its central forecast is now 2.4%.Policymakers at Australia's central bank agonised about whether to raise interest rates, according to the minutes of their monetary-policy meeting earlier this month.
The central forecast of Morgan Stanley, a bank that worked with the IFS on the report, is for growth of 1.75% in the first year and 2.25% in the second, however.
Andrew Sentance, a member of the monetary policy committee, told CNBC, "There is some risk of a double-dip recession but it is not the central forecast".
The IMF is concerned that things could turn out worse even than this.The Fund has cut its growth estimates for every part of the world (see table), but its central forecast is that America will avoid a recession.
At the Autumn Statement the OBR demonstrated the uncertainty around its central forecast by publishing two alternative scenarios – a high productivity one and weak productivity one.
A separate report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development CIPDD) warns that growth in the next few years has only to be slightly weaker than the Office for Budget Responsibility's (OBR) current central forecast for the jobs outlook to look "a lot worse" than the government anticipates.
The government's central forecast for the long-term price is just $70 a barrel.
Weale said it would be "foolish" to rule out the possibility of a double-dip recession, even though it was not Threadneedle Street's central forecast.
To be clear, Mr Haldane was talking about economists as a whole - not just the Bank - and said he still fundamentally agreed with the Bank's central forecast - made last November - that 2017 and 2018 could see a "material" slowdown in economic activity and a significant rise in inflation.
In contrast, the most recent report's central forecast, the deceptively titled "New Policies Scenario," sends Earth on a trajectory toward three degrees of warming.
Taking the UN's central forecast, by 2050 that share will have risen to 22% (of a population of over 9 billion), and in the developed countries to 33% (see chart 2).
