Analysis: The old joke about asking 10 economists a straight question and getting 11 different answers did not come into popular use by accident.

The old joke about asking 10 economists a straight question and getting 11 different answers did not come into popular use by accident.

There is often a scatter-gun-like pattern to macroeconomic predictions. Plenty of whipper-snappers keen to make a name for themselves with some wilder forecasts. Lots of hedging of bets. Not too much accountability if things go wrong.

However, mulling what the future holds for the UK economy, the economic gurus of the British Chambers of Commerce and Confederation of British Industry have come up with almost exactly the same answer.

Sometimes there's comfort in numbers. But there's no comfort at all in these projections. Especially not for the additional one million people expected by the CBI and BCC to be unemployed by 2010.

There was a depressing similarity between the BCC projections, published on Saturday, and the CBI's forecasts yesterday.

However, there was also an inevitability.

How else was it going to turn out?

The global economy has been heading toward this sorry state for many months. The hopes of Asian "decoupling" have been shattered, with official figures yesterday showing Japan in technical recession for the first time in seven years.

The woes of the US economy have been plain for all to see since the second half of last year. It was not for nothing that the US Federal Reserve embarked on a very aggressive programme of cuts in American interest rates even as oil prices were racing to fresh all-time highs.

On this side of the Atlantic, the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee pottered about at the edges.

External MPC member David Blanchflower, the US-based labour market economist, somehow found himself cast in the role of maverick as the committee voting splintered three ways. He has, in fact, turned out to be the voice of responsibility.

The UK, Blanchflower had long warned, was following the US into deep trouble. This has indeed proved to be the case.

The MPC looks way behind the game - given the time it takes cuts in interest rates to feed through to the economy.

It should not have taken a roomful of economists to work out that the dearth of credit for households and businesses, evident in the Bank of England's own surveys, was going to strangle economic activity. Especially given how readily available money had been before the global banking model was discredited.

The Bank of England's attempts to downplay the link between the UK housing market and consumer spending also seemed strange many months back.

As in past cycles, too much of what was happening in the UK economy was being driven by an unhealthy obsession with house prices. What about all those years of mortgage equity withdrawal to fund spending?

What about abundant anecdotal evidence that self-satisfaction about house-price appreciation was all the rage at suburban dinner parties?

The housing market had to cool.

However, given house prices and residential property transaction numbers were tumbling even before the very sharp rise in unemployment which is now underway, the MPC should have been thinking more carefully about the impact on the wider economy.

That said, the MPC has acted as it saw fit for the greater good. The same cannot be said for many of the commercial banks, even now as they put on public displays of penitence.

After the MPC's belated one-and-a-half-point cut in UK base rates to 3% on November 6, there is little sign that the belatedly-prudent banking sector is rushing to pass on the benefits to business or personal customers.

There are worrying tales of the most responsible of business customers being charged more for credit even as base rates tumble.

Those exorbitant mortgage arrangement fees which appeared with the credit crisis remain. A raft of tracker mortgages have been withdrawn and even those people already on such deals have clauses which can change the margin above the base rate when this falls below a certain level. New tracker ranges are, in some cases, charging more than two percentage points above base rate.

The Government is bailing out the UK banking sector in an effort to help the economy as a whole. But much of the banking sector still seems to be acting in an entirely self-interested manner.

It was such self-interested behaviour, let us remember, which landed us all in this economic trouble in the first place. Hopefully, as interbank lending rates continue to fall, banks will eventually start behaving more responsibly.

As the BCC observed, a significant recession is now "unavoidable" whatever happens.

Businesses are struggling amid the global economic turmoil. Surging unemployment will exacerbate the troubles in the housing market and, in spite of the Bank of England's procrastination about cause-and-effect, this will hit consumer spending and overall economic activity even harder.

Right now, many people are stuck in a kind of time bubble.

Things are not too bad yet.

There is even the odd relieved comment from some that things have not turned out as bad as had been warned.

Such people can hardly be blamed. They are not steeped in economic theory and figure they have been hearing about the credit crunch for months now without much change to their standard of living.

Unfortunately, the time bubble is about to burst for many. It has been pricked for some already, notably those in the financial and construction sectors and those who make their living from the housing market. Retail looks to be next in the firing line.

The BCC and CBI are almost in complete agreement about what the future holds.

The CBI forecasts the UK economy will shrink by 1.7% next year, and the BCC expects 1.6% contraction.

Both predict five consecutive quarters of contraction for the UK - starting in the middle of this year.

The BCC forecasts UK unemployment will have risen to 2.95 million on the International Labour Organisation measure by the third quarter of 2010, from 1.82 million at the last count.

The CBI sees ILO unemployment peaking at 2.88 million in the third quarter of 2010.

According to the CBI economics team, the recession will be "tougher and longer" than feared previously.

"Painful and prolonged" was how BCC economic adviser David Kern put it.

So we are reduced to only one forecast from these two economic teams.

And this is no laughing matter.