The Dominion

You'd think that a government with an increasingly severe unemployment problem would be desperate to approve a project that would provide 20,000 direct jobs, even if that government does have bigger - but related - things on its mind this week.

While the alleged Aug. 2 drop-deadline for raising the U.S. government's US$14.3-trillion debt ceiling is obsessing Washington, the State Department's final review of TransCanada Corp.'s $7-billion Keystone XL pipeline, which is due two weeks later, is arguably almost as symbolically significant for the direction of the American economy, at least as long as Barack Obama occupies the White House.