Unfastening Israel's Future from the Occupation: Israeli Plans for Partial Annexation of West Bank Territory

Israeli plans to partially annex West Bank territory have mainly been perceived as frustrating the two-state solution, and as putting Palestine/Israel on a path leading to the one-state alternative. This paper analyses partial annexation plans without assuming that the future of Palestine/Israel would necessarily abide by either statist resolution. It argues that by ostensibly distancing Israel's hold of the West Bank from an identifiable configuration of a belligerent occupation, partial annexation is offered to Jewish Israelis as a path for detaching the futurity of the two nations, and as a trajectory for normalising the Israeli state, without having to make what much of this public would see as painful concessions. It further explores settlers’ objections to such plans, claiming that even a partial incorporation of West Bank territory into formal Israel is expected to erode the exclusivity of Jewish domination which Israel has been upholding in its settler-colonial frontier.     

The Second Coming of Rail: The Spanish High-Speed Rail-Finance Complex

This article offers a critical account of Spanish high-speed rail (HSR) through the lens of the spatial fix. I designate the integration of Spanish HSR into a European-wide process of circulation of finance capital as the HSR-finance complex. The analysis of the inner workings of the HSR-finance complex reveals the way in which European finance has laid the conditions of possibility for the development of the project and offers a forewarning about the dangers of leveraging finance capital toward green infrastructure. The analysis of the Spanish HSR-finance complex shows that the particular form of capital circulation that has made it possible has not brought about new productive combinations but has instead deepened traditional relations of economic dependency and magnified their socioenvironmental consequences.     

China's Exchange Rate Controversy: A Balanced Analysis

A noted American authority on China's economy and monetary policy presents a statistical as well as theoretical analysis of a variety of perspectives on the controversy surrounding China's currency, basing his paper on both. The author provides the historical background and comprehensive summaries, focusing on different viewpoints about whether China's currency is undervalued, and thus may contribute to global imbalances. In the paper, he divides observers involved in the controversy into two main camps, namely the ones who find China's trade balances to be sensitive to price effects through exchange rate adjustments and those who emphasize other factors as bearing the responsibility for China's large surpluses, including the U.S. credit bubble emerging before the global financial crisis, as well as a version of Dutch disease.     

新中国中央银行职能的法规诠释

1948年12月中国人民银行成立以来,作为中央银行,负有"发行的银行"、"政府的银行"、"银行的银行"三大基本职能。为完善人民银行这三大职能,中央政府在法规方面逐渐加强建设,从仅在政府组织法体现人民银行央行职能到改革开放后出台强化人民银行央行职能的条例,最终在20世纪末出台了专门的单行法——《中华人民共和国中国人民银行法》以及2003年的修订本,并为此制定了相应的行政法规与金融规章,构楚了我国中央银行法律体系的基本框架。在法规日渐完善的同时,人民银行在国民经济的宏观调控中发挥着越来越重要的作用。     

西藏旧石器时代的再认识——以阿里日土县夏达错东北岸地点为中心

一、引言面对险恶的生存环境,初上西藏高原的人们在体会了缺氧、寒冷、资源缺乏后,都不仅要问人类何时拓殖这一片广袤的高原[1]。西藏高原有无旧石器时代遗存,是21世纪     

伪满洲国的中央银行制度

本文从伪满中央银行的产生、性质、职能角度研究伪满洲国的中央银行制度。伪满中央银行是在日本操纵下继承四行号业务基础上设立的,所谓＂圆活金融、稳定币值、统治金融＂不过是日本扩大对伪满洲国侵略与掠夺的手段与工具,其本质是实现日本的利益最大化。基于上述原因,伪满中央银行作为发币行和政府的银行之职能畸形膨胀,却无法承担集中存款准备、充当最后贷款人以及组织商业银行清算等＂银行的银行＂职能。     

Books Received

In this article, I discuss the role of the three Scandinavian central banks in the establishment of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in 1930, and in the international lender of last resort operation towards Austria in 1931. I argue that small central banks were reluctant supporters in the establishment of the BIS and free riders in the Austrian crisis, even though there were marked differences in their attitude to international cooperation. These results run counter to the views of those International Political Economy (IPE) theorists who argue that small states should be in favour of international cooperation. On the other hand, the evidence seems to confirm Kindleberger's hypothesis that small countries were free riding during the international financial crisis of 1931, and that therefore there is a need for some coordinating mechanism, or a hegemon, in such crises.     

Economic neutrality during the Cold War: the World Bank,the United States,and Pinochet’s Chile, 1973–1977

This paper reconstructs the unknown Chile-World Bank interactions during the formative years of Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973–1977). Prevalent understandings of the WB portray it as a loyal Washington ally. However, new evidence from the WB Archives and additional documents reveal that US efforts to make lending contingent on human rights considerations, thereby forcing the Bank to abandon its so-called economic neutrality, were only partially effective. Pinochet’s case provides a new prism to examine the cold war in Latin America and the Bank’s use of its ‘neutrality’ as a means to reach increasing autonomy from its strongest member states, mainly the United States.     

与跨国银行竞争——中国银行业的效率与金融安全

银行改革的成功与否决定着中国金融改革的成败。中国银行业改革和打造国家金融安全体系的核心是银行产业组织效率的提升。有竞争才有效率,有效率才有竞争力,有竞争力才有国家金融安全。国有银行体制转轨的路径选择应该是股权多元化的产权结构改革和放开行业管制的市场结构改革并重的综合改革,当前要警惕其引入战略投资者后强化行业的行政垄断,由“内部人控制”演变成“外部人控制”,损害国家金融安全。银行业应该全面对内资(特别是民间投资者)开放,对外资的开放须循序渐进。