The Bank also said that mortgage approvals numbered 60,518 in November, rising from an upwardly revised 57,718 in October and more than double its record low of 27,162 set in November 2008.

Bolstering the economic outlook, total orders rose a surprising 3 percent, to a seasonally adjusted $169.03 billion, after an upwardly revised 5.1 percent surge in August - the biggest monthly gain in a year - as inventories from the second quarter were depleted.

Total orders declined six-tenths of 1 percent, following an upwardly revised 1.8 percent growth rate in April.

The Commerce Department said that orders for durable goods rose 1 percent in July, and the Conference Board said that its index of consumer confidence rose to 81.3 in August from an upwardly revised 77 in July.

Whilst it is difficult to quantify the number of false negative results there have certainly been examples of evaluations suggesting a relatively limited amount of past activity which has had to be upwardly revised during the excavation.

Home building, whose ups and downs often precede changes in the broader economy, remained strong in January, with housing starts falling only a minuscule three-tenths of 1 percent from an upwardly revised December level, to an annual rate of 1.53 million units.

SCO has since upwardly revised this figure to over a million lines of code, however.

In fact, Abby Joseph Cohen, the co-chairwomen of the investment policy committee at Goldman Sachs & Company, puts earnings growth next year at 8 percent, slightly stronger than this year's upwardly revised 7 percent.

The 0.5 percent increase was in line with analysts' forecasts and followed an upwardly revised 0.3 percent gain in June.