An Oasis or Just a Mirage: The Jericho Casino and the Future of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process

By: Edward B. Miller

 

More than seven years have passed since the signing of the historic peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (“P.L.O.”). While the final borders and powers of a Palestinian State are still being discussed by the parties to the agreement, the fact of Palestinian autonomy is an irreversible reality. As such, the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has slowly been giving way to a self-governing Palestinian body which now administers most of the territories and nearly all of the Palestinian who reside therein.

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Building a Strong Subnational Debt Market

By: Paul S. Maco

 

Decentralization of responsibility for finance and growing infrastructure needs are two trends that are expected to stimulate a growth in government borrowing at the sub-national level. Statistics for the first half of 2000 show a significant increase in sub-national debt volume, with global public finance, excluding Canada and the United States, more than doubling that of the first half of 1999.

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The Misappropriation Theory Under the Chinese Securities Law – A Comparative Study With its U.S. Counterpart

By: Wenyan Ma

 

The first stock exchange in China, the Shanghai Stock Exchange, opened n December 1990. Since then, China’s securities market has been a journey of unprecedented development. However, the fledgling securities market is troubled by rampant securities fraud, evidence by Chinese officials’ open admission that investment in China’s securities market is very risky because of fraud and corruption. After a tortuous six-year drafting process, on December 29, 1998, the Chinese parliament passed the country’s first national Securities Law (“the Chinese Securities Law”), hoping to regulate the overwhelming fraud and corruption in China’s securities market. The Chinese Securities Law devoted one entire section of the Chapter “Securities Trade,” entitled “Prohibited Trading Activities,” to regulate securities fraud.

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Planning For High Net-Worth U.S. Persons Through the Use of Offshore Life Insurance

By: J. Richard Duke

 

Sophisticated planning for the high net-worth United States citizens often includes the use of offshore variable life insurance. Such leading edge planning is accomplished through structures that provide income, gift, estate, and generation-skipping transfer tax planning not available domestically. In addition to providing sophisticated tax and estate planning benefits, variable life insurance policies issued by foreign-based carriers have numerous economic advantages.

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