Things heat up as Nov 4 draws near
Business Times - 09 Sep 2008 Democrats and Republicans are wooing US voters with vastly different, strident messages. Whose will prevail? By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT IT SEEMED appropriate that just a day after the Republican Party ended its presidential nomination convention, following on the heels of a similar gathering of Democrats, the US government reported that the unemployment rate in the economy jumped to 6.1 per cent last month, its highest level in five years. At the same time, the Bush administration placed the two giant mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under the control of the federal government in what could amount to the largest taxpayer- backed bailout of US companies. And according to the report issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last Friday, more than 600,000 US jobs have been lost since January with unemployment rising to a level that reflects the dawning of a full-blown economic recession. Another sign of mounting economic problems was a ...