Chancellor Alistair Darling joked at the recent Labour Party conference that he thought the Northern Rock crisis would turn his eyebrows grey.
Yet as Mr Darling, 53, prepares to present both the Pre-Budget Report and Comprehensive Spending Review on Tuesday, two of the UK's leading economists say the recent Northern Rock woes may be just the start of his worries.
Concerns that economic growth is set to slow and the public deficit is set to widen are coupled with signs that the housing market may have peaked.
And with the Conservatives' headline-grabbing plans to cut inheritance tax, it is clear that the path ahead for Mr Darling may well be rockier than the Rock.
Queues spell trouble
Until last month, when Northern Rock stumbled cap-in-hand to the Bank of England, begging for an emergency loan, Mr Darling was probably enjoying himself.
"Mr Darling has entered Number 11 at a very interesting time"
Promoted to chancellor on 28 June, following Mr Brown's appointment as prime minister, Mr Darling spent the summer getting used to life in Number 11 Downing Street.
Then a downturn in the US sub-prime mortgage sector sparked a global credit crunch that started to affect UK banks, most notably Northern Rock, and Mr Darling's honeymoon period was suddenly over.
After days of Northern Rock customers queuing outside the bank's High Street branches, Mr Darling eventually stepped in to guarantee the deposits of all its customers.
Too little, too late, cried critics, though Howard Archer, chief economist at Global Insight, disagrees.
"I think, to be honest, that he got away with it," says Mr Archer.
"He'll obviously be desperately hoping that there isn't another Northern Rock out there, but he is now proposing to tighten up the whole framework, raising the amount of money in accounts that is protected."
Stretched finances?
Going forward, Mr Darling is facing an even more pressing concern, namely the state of the UK economy, and the impact of any slowdown on the already stretched public coffers.
Mr Darling is expected to downgrade the government's economic growth prediction for 2008, which is currently in a 2.5% to 3% range, as a chorus of economists cites weaker consumer confidence and interest rate concerns as evidence that growth could be considerably slower.
"Our forecast is between 2.2% and 2.5% growth next year, perhaps even as low as 1.75%," says Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec."
Global Insight predicts a growth rate of less than 2%.
Slower economic growth means reduced tax revenues for the government, and the spending targets set by Mr Brown when he was still chancellor will be hard to meet.
As a result, Mr Darling has inevitably had to tread very carefully when preparing the Pre-Budget Report and the longer-term Comprehensive Spending Review, which sets out the government's expenditure over the next three years.
'Golden rule'
In essence, he must choose between raising taxes, borrowing more money, cutting spending or blaming his predecessor. (Expect generous odds on the last one.)
Analysts predict a convoluted mixture of the first three.
Yet with the most recent official data showing that net public sector borrowing expanded to £9.1bn in August, from £6.7bn a year earlier, Mr Darling has little room to move if he wants to borrow more.
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Especially as his hands are tied by Mr Brown's "golden rule"; a pledge to only borrow to invest, not to fund current spending.
It is inevitable, therefore, that some government departments will fail to get the cash they had hoped for from the Treasury.
"Mr Darling has entered Number 11 at a very interesting time," says Mr Shaw.
Even though there will not be a November election, he is going to have to work hard to persuade government departments to keep their spending to the levels he needs.
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