Business is more than just an amused bystander at the “baloney war” going on among City economists about the accuracy of official preliminary figures showing a 0.4 per cent economic contraction in the third quarter. The confusion threatens to make companies even more risk-averse. That, in turn, could help to ensure recovery is slow.

Disputes among economists are hardly novel, but the invective is unusually sharp. Goldman Sachs, led by Kevin Daly, described the official figures as “unbelievable, literally”. It argues, using data going back several years, that initial GDP estimates are a poor predictor of the eventual revised figures and less accurate than other indicators such as purchasing managers’ indices. Danny Gabay of Fathom Financial Consulting said Goldman’s work was “baloney” and failed to take account of methodological changes.