The United States is one step closer to a government shutdown after Democrats rejected a proposal by Republicans to delay the Affordable Care Act by one year in exchange for passing temporary funding for the US federal government.
Failure to pass a funding bill by midnight – 2pm AEST – would see thousands of US government employees forced to take unpaid leave.
“One faction of one party in one house of Congress in one branch of government doesn’t get to shut down the entire government just to refight the results of an election,” US President Barack Obama says.
“Congress needs to keep our government open, needs to pay our bills on time, and never, ever threaten the full faith and credit of the United States of America.”
Online sales slipped by 0.1% during August to an annual growth rate of 9.6%, the slowest since 2010, according to new NAB figures.
The figures also show that online sales now equate to 6.2% of spending in traditional retailers.
“What we’re also seeing is weakness just about everywhere, but particularly in fashion, which is one of our largest sub-sectors online,” NAB chief economist Alan Oster says.
“I think what you’re really seeing is weak levels of retail sales and that’s being affected both in the traditional sales and online.”
Alan Kohler is stepping aside from the ABC’s Inside Business program after 12 years on air, citing the “ridiculous workload” created by the program in addition to his other commitments.
‘‘I’ve been doing Inside Business for 12 years, it really has been great. I’ve really enjoyed it. I designed the program, started it off, had fantastic people working on it,” Kohler says.
‘‘I really enjoyed doing the TV interviews, so I’m going to miss that. I’d like to find a way to continue doing interviews, if I can.’’
The national broadcaster says it remains committed to its business news coverage, despite the Sunday morning business news program ending its run on December 1.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 0.84% to 15129.67. The Aussie dollar is up to US93.26 cents.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
