Aussies returning to work from the beach or the bush would have hoped that 2009 might bring some relief from last year's unrelenting torment of bad economic news.
No such joy.
Instead, just days into the new year, economists are seeing enough grim portents in the first batches of official data to review their prognoses of the economy's health.
ANZ senior economist Katie Dean may be the first out of the blocks, saying yesterday's woeful figures for new building approvals prompted the bank to slice more than a third off its growth forecast for Australia's gross domestic product growth.
"Building approvals is a leading indicator for activity, so that has caused us to make around a 0.25% (cut) from growth over 2009," said Ms Dean.
ANZ Bank currently expects 2009 GDP growth of 0.4%, "with the risk of recession looming large."
Westpac, too, may move to lower their forecasts in the wake of the 13% slump in building approvals in November alone. Since houses on average take three months to build, the plunge is likely to reverberate through the first three months of 2009, said Westpac senior economist, Andrew Hanlan.
"I suspect most people wouldn't have fully factored that sort of drop into their forecast," Mr Hanlan said.
Before any revisions, Westpac now forecasts GDP growth of 0.2% in the first three months of 2009. GDP growth came in at 0.1% for the third quarter of 2008, the latest official figures available.
Relatively rosy
Any growth, though, would put Australia among the best performing economies, with the US, the European Union and Japan already mired in recession.
The incoming US president Barack Obama takes over stewardship of an economy that may shrink more than 2% this year, generating potentially annual budget deficits in the range of $US1 trillion ($1.4 trillion) for years to come.
The shock drop in housing approvals and the halving of the trade surplus recorded in November may be enough to blow a bigger hole in Australian growth forecasts in coming months, nudging Australia closer to a recession, according to several analysts.
For now, Australia's Federal Government is predicting a budget more or less in balance. That confidence, though, may ebb as the toll of extra spending adds up. Rising jobless levels will mean higher unemployment payments, while the battering of superannuation payments following last year's market meltdown will push more retirees onto the pension.
The gusher of resource royalties is also at risk as demand from major buyers of Australia's iron-ore, coal and other commodities wilts.
Surplus blues
Yesterday's figures showed Australia's string of trade surpluses is likely to be a very short one. In November, the balance of goods and services halved to $1.45 billion from the previous month, with economists warning the drop was caused mostly be a drop in volumes.
When key prices for coal and iron-ore get re-negotiated in coming months, the value of commodity exports is likely to be squeezed much further, analysts say.
For economists such as JPMorgan's Helen Kevans, the actual volumes of exports, when released on January 23rd, may trigger reductions in overall growth forecasts for the fourth quarter.
JPMorgan currently forecasts a quarterly 0.5% GDP contraction for the final three months of 2008. Ms Kevans doesn't expect to adjust her estimate until she can measure "how much the fall in export and imports values - that we saw yesterday - was due to falling prices and how much was due to falling volumes."
For now, JPMorgan has a first-quarter GDP forecast of a contraction of 0.2%, implying the economy will fall into a recession for the first time in about 17 years - based on the standard definition of such a downturn as two consecutive quarters of contraction.