US sinks deeper amid war of words

The political and financial crisis gripping the US appeared to have only deepened after President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner attacked each other over the failure to avert a catastrophic financial default next week.

Positions seemed to harden after they engaged in an extraordinary joust over fiscal issues that have consumed Washington since a large block of first-term members of the US House of Representatives, elected last year under the mantle of the small-government, low-tax tea party, returned the lower chamber to Republican control.