Next said: "The longevity of what appears to be a speculative bubble in cotton prices will be critical in determining prices for the second quarter." Cotton prices are running at a 15-year high after crops in China and Pakistan were hit by floods in recent months. On top of this, unseasonal weather in the US - the world's third largest producer - and an Indian export ban have hit world cotton crops. At the same time speculators have bought up large quantities of cotton in the hope of profiting from the increase, causing what analysts believe is a 'perfect storm' in the market.

Benchmark cotton futures for December delivery rose by 3.6 percent to reach $1.39 (86 pence) a pound on Wednesday. This is a record and an increase of over 80 percent since the summer. Any increase in prices could dampen the consumer economy. They would come on top of January's VAT rise from 17.5 percent to 20 percent and concerns over public sector job cuts.

Non-food items rose by 1.1 per cent because of the increase in VAT during the year and the overall inflation rate for goods in shops increased by 2.2 per cent, the BRC said. If families usually spend 100 pounds a week on groceries, the rise is the equivalent to adding 230 pounds to their annual bill. Experts warned of even higher increases in the New Year as VAT rises in January from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent and retailers shield consumers from price rises. But this could mean high street price wars as retailers compete "even more fiercely".

The figures from the BRC, which speaks for the major supermarkets, are a further sign of the pain being felt by millions of families and pensioners hit by pay freezes who are struggling to make ends meet. It comes as all of the major supermarkets, Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons continue to see a boom in profits. "Weak consumer confidence and a sluggish housing market mean retailers are competing even more fiercely for the limited discretionary spending available," said Stephen Robertson, the BRC director general.

"That situation is unlikely to change in the run up to Christmas, with retailers clamouring to win the attention of cash-strapped consumers through discounting and promotions."

After days of continual explosions, and warnings that pressure inside Mount Merapi may still be building, the province warned it was running out of money to help more than 70,000 people forced from their homes. Soldiers loaded women and crying children into trucks while rocks and debris rained from the sky late Wednesday afternoon. Several abandoned mountainside homes were set ablaze and the carcasses of incinerated cattle littered the scorched flanks.

"This is an extraordinary eruption," said Surono, a state volcanologist who had earlier said energy building up behind a magma dome in the crater appeared to be easing. He said Wednesday's powerful blast, which dusted cars, trees and roads in towns up to 130 miles away in gray ash, had triple the force of the first eruption on October 26. The follow-up before dawn Thursday was strong as well, sending rocks cascading down the western slopes.

"We have no idea what's happening," Surono said, as he shook his head, watching the bobbing needle of a seismograph machine. "It looks like we may be entering an even worse stage now." Forty people have died since it burst back to life just over a week ago, said Heru Nugroho, a spokesman at the main hospital dealing with the dead and injured. In 1994, 60 people were killed, while in 1930, more than a dozen villages were torched, leaving up to 1,300 dead.

Still, as with other volcanoes in this seismically charged country, tens of thousands call its fertile slopes home. Most now are packed in crowded government camps well away from the base.

"This nation is on a course where if we don't do something about it, get federal situation, the fiscal policy [under control], we're Greece. We're a banana republic," said Gregg. "Our status as a nation is threatened by what we've got coming at us in the area of deficit and debt. And it's only a few more years, at the most, that we have to work with here before the market says, 'Sorry, your currency is something we can not continue to defend.'"

Gregg and Senator Evan Bayh, (Democrat for Indiana), debated on CNBC the results of the midterm elections, in which Republicans took the House, while Democrats retained a razor-thin majority of the Senate.

"I happen to think the Tea Party is in the mainstream of where political thought is right now," Gregg went on to say. "[It's to] get the deficit under control, get the debt under control and pass on to our children a country that is prosperous and secure. We've had a radical explosion in the size of government in the last two years: You've gone from 20 percent of GDP to 24 percent of GDP headed toward 28 percent of GDP. That has to be brought under control or basically we're going to bankrupt the country."

The US economy grew by an annual rate of 2% between July and September, which is not enough to reduce high unemployment. Some analysts see QE as the last chance to get the US economy back on track. The move was widely flagged, with most analysts expecting the Fed to inject $500 billion into the economy. For this reason, stock markets rose only slightly, with the Dow Jones closing up 26 points at 11,215, still enough to take the index to its highest level for two years.

Interest rates are already close to zero, which means the Fed cannot reduce rates any further in order to boost demand - the more traditional policy used by central banks to stimulate growth. Instead, it has announced a fresh round of QE, in which it will create money to buy long-dated government bonds. The programme has been dubbed QE2, after the Fed pumped $1.75 trillion into the economy during the downturn in its first round of QE.

It is in addition to the Fed's previously announced plan to reinvest $250-300 billion of repayments it is due from existing US mortgage debt investments over the coming year.

One member of the Fed's Open Market Committee, which decides interest rates and QE, voted against the additional stimulus measures. Thomas Hoenig argued that further stimulus could, over time, create inflationary pressure and "destabilise the economy". Opinions are divided about how effective QE2 will be, partly because of questions about how much impact the first, much larger, round of QE had. Some credit the programme with pulling the US out of recession, while others argue that it had little impact on consumer demand and the tight credit conditions that make it hard for individuals and businesses to access bank finance.

As a result, some economists believe the Fed will have to pump far more than $500 billion into the economy to make a meaningful difference. "The bottom line is the plan provides a boost to the economy's growth, but it is not going to solve our problems," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "Even with the Fed's action, we're going to feel uncomfortable about the economy in the next six to 12 months."

Since the MMR scare more than 12 years ago the number of children receiving the combined jab for measles, mumps and rubella has fallen by a third in some parts of the country. At the same time cases of measles and mumps, which are particularly infectious, have increased ten fold.

Dr Bhatti, director of public health at East Lancashire Primary Care Trust, said parents had a "responsibility" to ensure their children were immunised. He said that many still feared potential side effects, despite the fact that Dr Andrew Wakefield's study which first prompted the scare had since been discredited. Dr Bhatti, a GP who has advised several PCTs on public health initiatives, is now trying to negotiate school admission changes with Lancashire County Council to include the jab amongst the criteria.

He said: 'If you like it's a radical idea, but I feel an appropriate suggestion for East Lancashire is that we change nurseries and schools admission policies so parents realise they have a due diligence responsibility for not infecting their children and their friends' children. It's what happens in France.' There, you can't be admitted to school unless you show your vaccination certificate.

In November 1910, Senator Nelson W Aldrich and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department A P Andrews, and other top financiers, arrived at the Jekyll Island Club to discuss monetary policy and the banking system. The secret meetings led to the creation of the Federal Reserve.

Forbes magazine founder Bertie Charles Forbes wrote several years later:

Picture a party of the nation's greatest bankers stealing out of New York on a private railroad car under cover of darkness, stealthily riding hundred of miles South, embarking on a mysterious launch, sneaking onto an island deserted by all but a few servants, living there a full week under such rigid secrecy that the names of not one of them was once mentioned, lest the servants learn the identity and disclose to the world this strangest, most secret expedition in the history of American finance.

I am not romancing; I am giving to the world, for the first time, the real story of how the famous Aldrich currency report, the foundation of our new currency system, was written... The utmost secrecy was enjoined upon all. The public must not glean a hint of what was to be done. Senator Aldrich notified each one to go quietly into a private car of which the railroad had received orders to draw up on an unfrequented platform.

Off the party set. New York's ubiquitous reporters had been foiled... Nelson (Aldrich) had confided to Henry, Frank, Paul and Piatt that he was to keep them locked up at Jekyll Island, out of the rest of the world, until they had evolved and compiled a scientific currency system for the United States, the real birth of the present Federal Reserve System, the plan done on Jekyll Island in the conference with Paul, Frank and Henry... Warburg is the link that binds the Aldrich system and the present system together. He more than any one man has made the system possible as a working reality.

The former Bank of England expert's warning about the 'zombie households' which could be tipped into financial oblivion when interest rates rise were echoed by a series of finance experts last night. One said many people were 'living in a fool's paradise' because of low interest rates.

Mr Gabay did not estimate the number of households in peril. But recent figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders found that almost 3 million borrowers could be plunged into difficulty if interest rates rise by 2 per cent. Even at the current rock-bottom rates, almost 1.3 million families are already grappling with mortgage payments that eat up more than 35 per cent of their after-tax income, the level at which the Financial Services Authority classes loans as 'unaffordable.'

Mr Gabay said: 'It is an extraordinary position to be in. Fixing government finances is important but is only part of the problem. The other, larger part, is fixing household finances, where in fact the crisis began. It is very politically convenient to believe that the crisis was caused by greedy bankers but nobody made people take out mortgages of five times their income. Lots and lots of people borrowed too much.'

The long-awaited moment of "triple parity" seems imminent. The Swiss franc is already worth more than a greenback, and the Canadian dollar is seemingly poised to break through as well. The surging "Aussie" - widely seen as a play on the China growth story and used by traders as a proxy for the Chinese yuan - captures the shift in the world's economic centre of gravity to the Pacific region. The currency was worth half a US dollar just nine years ago.

Australia's reserve bank said the "the economy is now subject to a large expansionary shock from the high terms of trade and has relatively modest amounts of spare capacity. The risk of inflation rising again over the medium term remains". The move caught markets off guard. Credit growth has been cooling off over recent weeks and inflation is still just at 2.8 percent - compared to 3.1 percent in the UK - but the bank appears concerned about the risk of a wage spiral.

HSBC said emerging markets and commodity exporters such as Australia are opting for "quantitative tightening" to offset the liquidity effects of quantitative easing in the US, which is causing a flood of money into faster growing economies. Several states are toying with capital controls. India's central bank has also tightened further, raising rates a quarter point to 6.25 percent. It has imposed draconian housing curbs to reduce "excessive leveraging" and prick the bubble, limiting mortgages to 80 percent of property values.

HSBC's currency team said the Australian dollar may be nearing its peak. "One concern relates to the deflating of the property bubble in China. This could happen gently but, if not, the Aussie will not avoid the fall-out. A sharp fall in Chinese property prices may very well lead to a deep examination of Australia's property bubble, and Australian banks," they wrote in a client note.

The report said Australia's lenders rely heavily on funding from abroad to finance the country's internal boom, creating a risky mismatch in liabilities. "Rationally or irrationally, this could turn very sour. The Aussie party looks set to come to an end soon," it said.

We heard the first rumbles of trouble from these freshly gathering storm clouds last week when unexpectedly strong UK third-quarter growth caused a minor correction to gilt prices. Yet this was fast forgotten. The latest purchasing managers' index figures, indicating rising confidence in the UK manufacturing sector, were completely ignored.

Bond investors continue to look forward with growing certainty to a slow or nil-growth future, where interest rates and inflation remain subdued for years to come. It's happened before - very low inflation and bond yields have persisted for decades in the past - so why not again?

Yet it's not just prospects for a Japanese-style lost decade that are driving bond yields towards record lows. Anticipation of further QE - whereby central banks flood the economy with cash by buying up government debt - is creating a self-feeding spiral of ever-falling rates. This is an accident waiting to happen.

Yet policymakers seem determined to push ahead with QE2. On Wednesday, the US Federal Reserve is expected to sanction a further $500 billion (312 billion pounds) of bond purchases. And despite vocal objections from at least four members of the Open Markets Committee, Ben Bernanke, the chairman, has indicated a willingness to keep pumping money into the economy on a more or less indefinite basis until core inflation is unambiguously rising again and unemployment is falling. Once markets suspect the inflation genie is out of the bottle, the damage is always swift and devastating.

The exchange said preliminary investigations indicated that the human error "may have occurred in suspicious circumstances", adding that it took the matter "very seriously" and the relevant authorities had been informed. The Financial Services Authority is understood to have been told.

The LSE declined to comment any further on the investigation. Turquoise, which trades the largest European stocks including those listed in France, Germany and the Netherlands, went down at 8.32am on Tuesday before trading resumed at 10.30am, the exchange said. Following the glitch, the LSE has decided to delay adopting the same technology for its main trading system.

Xavier Rolet, LSE chief executive, wants to migrate the exchange's main order book trading platform Sets to new technology that is already in use by Turquoise. The shift would make it faster and more attractive to high-frequency trading firms that generate large volumes. Tuesday's disruption marks the second glitch in less than a month. On October 5, a problem with a network card forced the exchange to shut the system for over an hour. Last month's problem came only two days after Turquoise had moved across to the new technology platform.

In April, it was Eyjafjallajokull. Now, there is a new threat from Iceland to European air travel: Grimsvotn. Meltwater is currently gushing from a glacier above Iceland's most volatile volcano, suggesting significant sub-glacial seismic activity. On Monday geophysicists told reporters that the flood at the remote southeastern Vatnajokull glacier could be an indication that the Grimsvotn volcano underneath is about to erupt once again - raising fears of a repeat of the immense ash clouds last spring which seriously disrupted both trans-Atlantic and European air travel.

So far, says Gunnar Gudmundson from the Icelandic Meteorological office, no underground tremors have been detected. Such tremors are often a reliable signal of an impending eruption. But scientists are monitoring the mountain closely for further tell-tale indications that it is about to blow its top.

The Grimsvotn volcano magma chamber lies buried under 650 feet of glacial ice and volcanic lakes. Movements of magma could be responsible for melting the ice above. Pressure then builds up under the ice until water is forced up to the surface of the glacier. The resulting "glacial blasts" have been known to send huge clouds of ice, fine ash and dust into the skies. Grimsvotn last erupted in November 2004, spewing volcanic ash 40,000 feet into the atmosphere. The ash fell to earth as far away as Scandinavia and caused temporary disruption to local air travel.

At the same time, inventories are at their lowest levels in decades. "All buyers we see are buying on a hand-to-mouth basis," said Peter de Klerk of Czarnikow, the London sugar merchant. That has pushed prices up sharply, with raw sugar futures in New York soaring 135 per cent from a low of 13 cents in May.

On Tuesday ICE March sugar rose 4 per cent to a peak of 30.64 cents a pound, surpassing the level reached in February and rising to their highest point since 1980, when prices jumped to nearly 45 cents. The dramatic rise in sugar prices is causing headaches for policymakers. While sugar is widely available in the west and its price is rarely considered, it is an essential source of cheap calories in emerging economies, where surging sugar prices are driving food inflation.

On Tuesday India's central bank raised benchmark interest rates for the sixth time this year in an attempt to curb inflation. New Delhi has emerged as a crucial factor in the sugar market, as India's harvest is expected to be large, but the government is still debating how much sugar to allow the country's industry to export. Traders expect India to authorise exports of 1-2 million tonnes starting in December. Anything less, or even a delay to the decision, could send prices spiralling higher, traders warn.

"I think a 20 percent decline in the dollar is possible," Gross said, adding the pace of the currency's decline was also an important consideration for investors. When a central bank prints trillions of dollars of checks, which is not necessarily what (a second round of quantitative easing) will do in terms of the amount, but if it gets into that territory - that is a debasement of the dollar in terms of the supply of dollars on a global basis," Gross told Reuters in an interview at his PIMCO headquarters.

The Fed will probably begin a new round of monetary easing this week by announcing a plan to buy at least $500 billion of long-term securities, what investors and traders refer to as QE II, according to a Reuters poll of primary dealers. "QEII not only produces more dollars but it also lowers the yield that investors earn on them and makes foreigners, which is the key link to the currencies, it makes foreigners less willing to hold dollars in current form or at current prices," Gross added.

Control of the House sets up Republicans to block Obama initiatives. The president phoned John Boehner, the likely new House Speaker, to say he hoped to "find common ground" with him. Speaking after his own re-election, Mr Boehner vowed to cut spending and reduce the size of government. He said voters had sent Mr Obama a message to "change course". Compounding the misery for Mr Obama's camp, a Republican captured the president's old Senate seat in Illinois.

While some of the Tea Party's most eccentric candidates lost their races, the conservative wing of the Republican Party is now a power in the land, BBC North America editor Mark Mardell reports. This is hugely difficult for the president, our editor says. While there will be much talk of compromise and reaching deals, many Tea Party supporters' explicit aim is to block and undo Mr Obama's agenda.

Up for election were all 435 seats in the House (the lower chamber of Congress), 37 of the 100 seats in the Senate, governorships of 37 of the 50 states and all but four state legislatures. With counts still to be completed, projections suggested the Republicans had obtained a net gain of 57 seats in the House, more than in the tumultuous 1994 mid-terms.