Amid the cash-flow problems, DCM's main lender, Canada-based Maple Trade Finance, has taken control of some of the company's assets, said Carole-Ann Miller, Maple Trade's president.

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Partly, too, Mr McCain's low rating may reflect the difficulties of making his main policy proposal, campaign-finance reform, interesting to voters.

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Three main factors are blamed for the likely constraints on long-term finance.

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Extra demand for the dollar as the world's main reserve currency has made it even easier for America to finance its current-account deficit.

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For Germany to take a proper part, he reckons, the main levers in Bonn should all be at finance, not shared with the traditionally more free-market economics ministry.

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Mr Lara Resende is a respected academic economist, who was one of the main intellectual authors of the real plan, the inflation-beating strategy launched by Mr Cardoso as finance minister in 1994, and who has since devised the government's plans for a crucial pension reform.

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