Home loans to fall £60

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Londoners with a typical £200,000 home loan will be £64 a month better off if the Bank of England base rate is cut next month by half a point to five per cent.

The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee is scheduled to decide on interest rates on 7 February but now faces huge pressure to act before then. Governor Mervyn King can call an emergency meeting if he wishes.

In the US, interest rates were slashed by three quarters of one per cent to 3.5 per cent as America was confronted with the growing likelihood of a recession.

This was the biggest cut in living memory - even after 9/11 in 2001 the Federal Reserve cut the rate by only half a percentage point. However, it did not stop the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling more than 350 points in early trading on Wall Street.

The Fed's move followed 48 hours of huge fluctuations. City traders were today accused of acting like "headless chickens" as they tried to follow the violent ups and downs.

In early trading the FTSE-100 index dropped by 239.5 points, a 4.3 per cent fall on top of yesterday's 5.5 per cent crash, bringing the losses to £120 billion.

It then staged a remarkable rally with shares reaching a high of 5653.

Senior ministers led by Gordon Brown moved swiftly to try to shore up confidence by insisting that Britain was "well-placed" to withstand the global turbulence. But economists said the markets were "hanging on a thread of uncertainty".