Banks are being pressured by the government to roll over existing loans and make new ones, and firms encouraged to extend credit and maintain business relations.

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Kathy was the business's secretary, bookkeeper, credit department, public-relations manager -- she did everything in the office, while her husband handled the building and painting.

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Kandace Barker, a freshman public relations major at Howard University, said shopping with credit cards made her feel as though she could still buy clothes even if she didn't have money.

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Mr Mandelson deserves credit for resisting the temptation to use his new job to mend relations with his party's unmodernised left.

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Some colleagues complain that he excavates incautiously, puts public relations before science, hypes his own archeological finds, and takes credit owed to others.

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Years of mismanagement, coupled with a lack of access to international credit markets following a massive sovereign debt default in 2001 and failure to normalize relations with global creditors, have left the country a net oil importer in 2011.

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