Joseph Belbruno Blog

  Printing money sounds like a good idea until reality comes to the party Dominic O’Connell Next image  › "Everyone likes more public services and higher government spending as long as they are not the ones paying for it. As George Bernard Shaw put it in 1944, a government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul. Why should politicians not take this idea to its logical conclusion? What if neither Peter nor Paul had to pay, and you could snaffle both their votes? What if the Treasury could simply print as much money as it wanted to pay for whatever we needed? That might sound mad, but it is an old idea that is coming back into vogue thanks to Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green Party. He has said the government shouldn’t worry about the gilts market and the Bank of England’s balance sheet is “money we owe to ourselves”. As Matthew Parris pointed out on Wednesday, all kinds of people love Polanski’s fresh approach. It may, however, be about to be r...

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  China Is Getting Much of What It Wants From the U.S., Including Chips President Trump and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, after their meeting in Busan, South Korea, in October. Mr. Trump’s latest moves extended the conciliatory posture he struck at this summit. Credit... Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times In its rivalry with the United States, China has racked up a series of wins in recent weeks. The Trump administration has softened its criticism of China’s Communist Party in a strategy document. It has reopened a channel for high-end chip sales that Washington once treated as untouchable. And President Trump has held his tongue as a key U.S. ally in Asia faces Chinese intimidation for backing Taiwan. For Beijing, the shifts in Washington’s approach suggest that Mr. Trump has less of an appetite for confronting China over ideology, technology and diplomacy. Some commentators in China have hailed these developments as irrefutable signs of American decline and Chinese ascendancy. Mr. Tru...

  Historic Shift Underway in China’s Economy as Investment Slump Deepens Investment in manufacturing, infrastructure and property is expected to fall this year, a remarkable turn for an economy whose growth reshaped the world. Listen to this article · 7:58 min  Learn more 36 An auto factory in Ningbo, China. The Chinese government has discouraged manufacturers of electric vehicles from engaging in ruthless competition. Credit... Qilai Shen for The New York Times Dec. 12, 2025,  5:02 a.m. ET For the past three decades, as China’s economy has developed into a global powerhouse, investment has grown reliably each year. That is about to change. This year, China’s investments in assets like new factories, public infrastructure and housing are expected to fall for the first time since the late 1980s, ushering in a more conservative era for an economy that has reshaped the global order with years of robust growth. The shift also signals that investing in China is no longer a sur...

  Skip to content Skip to site index Search & Section Navigation GIVE THE TIMES Opinion Guest Essay How Bad Is Finance’s Cockroach Problem? We Are About to Find Out. Oct. 27, 2025 Video It’s Cockroach-Harvesting Time Credit Credit... Natalia Volvacheva Listen to this article · 7:48 min  Learn more Share full article 611 By  Natasha Sarin Ms. Sarin, a contributing Opinion writer, is a professor at Yale Law School and the president of the Budget Lab at Yale. She served in the Treasury Department during the Biden administration. It was early last month when observers noticed ominous cracks in the facade of one of America’s most important financial markets. Tricolor, one of the largest used-car retailers in Texas and California, abruptly declared bankruptcy. Federal investigators are  reportedly  looking into whether the company committed fraud by promising the same collateral to multiple lenders. Shortly after Tricolor cratered, something similar happened ...