CLICK CHART TO ENLARGE

of the 2-3% of Total Residential Sales made to Foreigners:

CLICK CHART TO ENLARGE

of the Canadians who bought U.S, Residential Real Estate:

CLICK CHART TO ENLARGE

Diane Francis "Merger of The Century"
on The McLaughlin Group April 18, 2014

"Exodus" Bob Marley Live in Santa Barbara 1979

CLICK CHART TO ENLARGE

Youtube (2.24min) MacBeth's Toil and Trouble
from Roman Polanski's "The Tragedy of MacBeth" 1971

The Tragedy of Macbeth (1971)
Directed by Roman Polanski 
Based on the play by William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
Interpreted by Jon Finch, Francesca Annis, Martin Shaw, Terence Bayler.

XXXIII. 
A dark, gloomy and sinister place in a plain. 
It's night. Macbeth arrives on horseback. 
The weird sisters are singing. He approaches their refuge. 
One of the three, the yougest, is naked and waits for him. 
She shows him into their refuge. 
He enters and sees lots of naked women 
and in the middle there's a boiling cauldron. 

Eldest witch: 
By the pricking of my thumbs, 
something wicked this way comes. 

All the witches are laughing. 

Macbeth:  
How now, you secret, black and midnight hags? What is it you do? 

Witch 1: 
A deed without a name. 

All together: 
Double, double, toil and trouble. 
Fire burn, cauldron bubble. 

Macbeth advances. 

Witch 2: 
Toad that under cold stone, 
days and nights has 31. 

She puts a frog into the cauldron. 

Witch 3: 
Swelted venom sleeping got, 
boil thou first in the charmed pot. 

She throws into the pot some liquid. 

Witch 4: 
Eye of newt and toe of frog, 
wool of bat and tongue of dog.

She throws into the pot all these things. 

Witch 5: 
Adder's fork and blindworm's sting, 
lizard's leg and howlet's wing.

Witch 6: 
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips, 
slivered in the moon's eclipse. 

Macbeth looks at them, disgusted. 

Witch 7: 
Fillet of a fenny snake, 
in the cauldron boil and bake. 

Witch 8: 
Liver of blaspheming Jew, 
gall of goat and slips of yew. 

Macbeth: 
I conjure you, by that which you profess, 
howe'er you come to know it. 
Answer me to what I ask you.

Eldest witch: 
Speak!

Witch 2: 
Demand!

Eldest witch: 
We'll answer. Say if thou'dst hear it from our mouths, 
or from our masters. 

Macbeth: 
Call them let me see them. 

A witch takes out a cup from a bag. She pours into it some of the liquid they are boiling into the cauldron.

Eldest witch: 
Cool it with a baboon's blood, 
then the charm is firm and good. 

She pours the blood into the cup. They all bring the cup to Macbeth. 
He takes it in his hands and drinks it. He is about to faint. 
The witches take him and bring him in front of the cauldron. 
He looks into it and sees his face reflected. 

Dialogue Source
Script transcription by Eleonora Capra (December 2007)

CLICK CHART TO ENLARGE

• Walmart will be closing marginal locations, about 9% of total in China.
• Hangzhou’s Grade A office buildings at the end of 2013 had average occupancy rate of 30%. 
• Hangzhou (fourth-largest metropolitan area of 2.5+ million people) faces “burgeoning swaths of empty apartment units.” 
• “It seems that the 30% price cut in Hangzhou (residential prices) has really changed the way Chinese people (nationally) think about real estate". 
• The real estate market in Hangzhou looks like it has just passed an inflection point... people’s mentality has changed.
• Now, the problem of no buyers is spreading across the country... China’s residential markets are becoming inelastic. People aren’t buying because they believe prices will decline further.
• Rich Chinese, now interested in foreign holdings, are also shunning their home market. Middle class Chinese are also largely out of the market.
• Many private developers had gambled that property prices would rise faster than interest rates, but that now looks like a losing bet.
• China is at the point where problems are feeding on themselves. Pessimism about property, which accounts for about 15% of China’s gross domestic product, is beginning to affect the broader economy. “Without question, everyone thinks there is a bubble.” 
• “The banking system and the shadow banking system are becoming concerned about exposure...  and refuse to provide credit to developers... forcing them to cut prices. If this persists, it will turn into a vicious loop.”

The extent of China's soil pollution, long guarded as a state secret, was laid out in an official report that confirmed deep-seated fears about contaminated farmland and the viability of the country's food supply. Nearly one-fifth of the country's arable land is polluted, officials said in the report, shedding unexpected light on the scale of the problem—a legacy of China's three decades of breakneck economic growth and industrial expansion.

In April 2013, the discovery of unusually high quantities of cadmium in batches of rice grown in Hunan—the country's top rice-producing region, as well as a top-five producer of nonferrous metals like copper and lead—set off worries about farmland and sent prices for Hunan rice tumbling by as much as 14%. Continue Reading at the Wall Street Journal.

VICE: The Devastating Effects of Pollution in China (Part 1/2)

VICE: The Devastating Effects of Pollution in China (Part 2/2)