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May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
May 28 2012 07:53
The City of Cape Town has spent R175m running the Myciti bus service since the Soccer World Cup compared to an income of R35m, a report says.
Washington - John McCain's White House campaign Monday dismissed rival Barack Obama's economic plan as a recipe to plunge the United States into a 1930s-style depression.
Top aides to the Republican senator vied to steal the thunder from an illustrious panel of economic advisors being convened by Obama - and recapture the headlines after the Democrat's much-acclaimed foreign tour.
But with fewer than 100 days to go before the November 4 election, Obama had opened up a nine-point lead in the latest Gallup poll released Sunday - 49% to 40 for McCain.
Carly Fiorina, a key lieutenant to McCain and former boss of computing giant Hewlett-Packard, said a recession triggered by the 1929 Wall Street crash became a depression through the imposition of higher taxes and trade barriers.
"The reality is when an economy is slowing, if you raise taxes and you curtail free trade through isolationist policies, bad economic times become worse," she told reporters. "We know this from history... and that is precisely the proposal that Barack Obama is making."
"And that is why I say as a businesswoman, I hope Barack Obama continues to consult with experts because I think his understanding of the economy leaves a great deal to be desired."
Obama, basking in the afterglow of his triumphant tour of Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East and Europe, is due to pivot from that security-themed week to addressing the gathering cloud engulfing the US economy.
His high-powered panel of advisers meeting later Monday includes former treasury secretary Robert Rubin, ex-Federal Reserve chairperson Paul Volcker, billionaire investor Warren Buffett and Google chairperson Eric Schmidt.
Campaign aides told AFP that two former top members of President George W. Bush's administration - treasury secretary Paul O'Neill and Securities and Exchange commissioner William Donaldson - were joining the Obama panel.
The Democratic senator from Illinois has laid out proposals for middle-class tax cuts while levying higher taxes on the rich, new federal stimulus spending, and additional measures to prop up the stricken housing market.
The Obama campaign accuses McCain of fuzzy arithmetic on his own vows to cut taxes across the board, balance the budget and sustain a hefty US military presence in Iraq.
And it has ridiculed McCain's admission last December that he knows more about national security than about the economy.
- Dow Jones