Conspiracy theorists who believe governments manipulate economic trends to boost their chances of re-election got a bit of a jolt this morning.
Gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter of 2015 grew by 0.3%, marking the slowest quarterly growth rate since the end of 2012.
The growth represents a halving of the growth rate in the preceding quarter and was comfortably below consensus forecasts of 0.5% growth.
"GDP figures show future of the economy is on the ballot paper," tweeted chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, on Twitter.
It is not exactly up there with Clinton's memo-to-self, "it's the economy, stupid" but he has a point.
On the corporate front, results from BP (LON:BP.) are attracting attention, not least because, unlike the GDP figures, they were better than expected. Or not.
As Augustin Eden, a research analyst at spread betting firm Accendo Markets, noted, the results are open to interpretations.
Profits fell sharply, but the refining business - Downstream, in oil sector jargon - did better than expected and the dividend has been maintained.
The shares are up a shade, but Eden seems unimpressed.
"The strong refining performance has not only allowed the company to maintain its dividend payment but shows that BP is being proactive in dealing with the oil price slump by concentrating more effort away from expensive exploration and production activities. "However, French oil major Total reported a similar state of affairs (a little better, even) this morning, indicating that what BP is doing is clearly not rocket science. There’s still a lot of work to be done, and the path back up to previous levels of profitability will remain somewhat slippery," Eden suggests.
The other big result of the morning is from emerging markets-focused lender Standard Chartered (LON:STAN), where the trading statement has given pundits lots of scope to speculate about the bank following HSBC's lead in reviewing whether it is worth the candle continuing to have its headquarters in the UK.
As for the numbers, Investec, which is bearish on the stock, notes: "In aggregate, revenues fell by 4% Q1/Q1 to US$4.4bn, (a 6% consensus miss), and PBT [profit before tax] of US$1.5bn is down 22% Q1/Q1, (a 7% consensus miss)."
"We believe that management change increases shareholder risks for this stock. We continue to forecast a cut in the dividend – from 86 cents in 2014 to 50 cents in 2015e – and although we do believe that STAN should be able to run with less capital than any other UK bank, we have reduced confidence as to whether such a situation will prevail," Investec said.
There has been some comment in the press about the expiration dates of the licences at the Horse Hill prospect in the Weald Basin, and because there are so many companies involved in this project, that has meant a plethora of announcements this morning from the interested parties (LON:UKOG, LON:EVO, LON:SOLO).
The key points are that the PEDL137 licence, within which the Horse Hill-1 well was drilled and which caused all the excitement earlier this month, expires on 30 September 2015, and the PEDL246 licence expires on 30 June 2019.
The operator of PEDL137 has, however, asked for a year's extension to the exploration licence, so all you Horse Hill backers can sit down again and have a nice relaxing cup of tea.
Elsewhere in the small cap world, shares in specialist engineer Hayward Tyler (LON:HAYT) have gone sideways since an astonishing run in 2013 and 2014, prompting house broker finnCap to suggest the shares appear to need a catalyst to reach what the broker considers a fair value of 113p.
This morning's trading update looked like it might be a start, with the shares rising from 79.45p to 75p but those gains have evaporated, albeit in a falling market.
Margins are on the rise and net debt is falling faster than expected, and although a projected revenue increase for the fiscal year just ended of 10% is a percentage point below finnCap's forecast, order intake of £41.7mln for the year looks healthy, the broker suggested.