Official figures due out are expected to show the UK economy shrank between July and September, confirming the country is on the brink of recession.
The economy shrank for the first time in 16 years between July and September, confirming the UK is on the brink of recession.
Forecasts of Gross Domestic Product - the country's domestic economic output - suggest data will show a fall of between 0.1% and 0.5% in the period.
Economic output fell by 0.5%, according to the Office for National Statistics, amid fears of a global slowdown and huge volatility on world share markets.
The figures would mark the first period of negative growth since 1992.
The UK will be classed as being in recession if the economy slows in the fourth quarter as well.
Two consecutive quarters of negative growth are taken as the UK measure of being in recession.
The credit crisis has forced consumers to tighten their belts.
This is the biggest fall in UK gross domestic product (GDP) since the first quarter of 1990 and the first contraction since the second quarter of 1992.
The combination of the credit crunch, house price falls and rising unemployment is bashing the economy.
On the year, GDP was 0.3% higher, the weakest rate of growth since the second quarter of 1992.
The situation was "going to get worse before it got better", predicted Global Insight economist Howard Archer, who is expecting GDP to be -0.2%.
He forecasts that this will be the first of three consecutive quarters of negative growth, followed by stagnation. This prediction foresees no growth until the last three months of 2009.
"It's hard to see in the near term what's going to lead to an improvement," Mr Archer said. DEFINING A RECESSION A recession is widely accepted as a decline in a country's domestic economic output or GDP for at least two consecutive quarters The layman's finance crisis glossaryQ&A: What is a recession?
"Unemployment is rising and will continue to do so, the housing market is going to drop further and share prices have tumbled.
"And even if the bank bail-out works, it is going to take some time before credit is more available, so the consumer is really constrained.
"Even though inflation is coming down, there are a lot of factors that this cannot offset."
A write-off
The director of research at Deloitte, Ian Stewart, said that whatever the latest GDP figure was, the bigger picture suggested there might not be growth until 2010 at the earliest, leaving 2009 "effectively as a write-off". PREVIOUS SEVERE RECESSIONS 1974: 1.4% fall in GDP1975: 0.6% fall1980: 2.1% fall1981: 1.5% fall1991: 1.4% fall Annual GDP figures by market prices (Source: Official for National Statistics)Why do we need economic growth?Send us your comments
"The distress in the banking system has made this very different to any recession we've seen before," he said.
"The previous two recessions have basically been down to inflation getting out of control.
"But here the tightness of credit means that even though interest rates are coming down, the cost of borrowing which consumers and businesses face is, if anything, going up."
Weak pound
In the second quarter of this year, between April and June, GDP was flat - meaning the economy stalled, showing no growth from the first quarter of 2008.
It marked the end of a run of more than 15 years of consecutive growth.
The expectation of a recession has sent the pound sharply down against the US dollar, which has a five-year low.
Earlier this month, the Bank of England, in co-ordination with other central banks, trimmed interest rates by half a percentage point to 4.5% to try to stimulate the economy.
This was despite inflation being more than twice the government's 2% target.
