The White House will see a silver lining in today's grim GDP figures, if they help to remind the negotiators on Capitol Hill of the fragility of the US recovery.

BBC: US recovery gets a downgrade

After the last quarterly figures, if you look at sort of six months, the economy has been flat-lining pretty much, unemployment high, and a lot of people are saying it's inevitably, inevitably going to rise further this year.

BBC: Transcript of George Osborne interview