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The Elusive Fix for China’s Budget Crisis

Across China, many local governments are on the brink of insolvency. Some cities have reduced pay for civil servants. Cuts to municipal health insurance have triggered street protests.Central government bailouts […]




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Stress Builds as Office Building Owners and Lenders Haggle Over Debt

A real estate investment fund recently defaulted on $750 million of mortgages for two Los Angeles skyscrapers. A private equity firm slashed the value of its investment in the Willis […]




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China’s Xi Pressures Tycoons With ‘Common Prosperity’ Talk

Four decades ago, Deng Xiaoping declared that China would “let some people get rich first” in its race for growth. Now, Xi Jinping has put China’s tycoons on notice that […]




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Why a $10,000 Tax Deduction Could Hold Up Trillions in Stimulus Funds

“I think it’s a giveaway to the rich,” she told reporters last month. “So, I do not believe in holding the entire infrastructure package hostage for a full repeal and […]




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After Pandemic, Shrinking Need for Office Space Could Crush Landlords

Roughly 17.3 percent of office space in Manhattan is available for lease, the most in at least three decades. Asking rents have dropped to just over $74 a square foot, […]




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Empty Office Buildings Squeeze City Budgets as Property Values Fall

WASHINGTON — At a meeting with Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen last month, Jeff Williams, the mayor of Arlington, Texas, laid out his grim economic predicament: Heavy spending on coronavirus […]




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California Tax Revolt Faces a Retreat, 40 Years Later

OAKLAND, Calif. — In 1978, a Los Angeles businessman named Howard Jarvis led an insurgent campaign to pass Proposition 13, a ballot measure that limited California property taxes and inspired […]