Gauge went on the offer the share price of the stock went up by 2 percent after the boards rejection letter was published even after having risen 6 percent on the day before on reports that negotiations were in process bella seaboard letter expressed disappointment as well the hong kong decided to go public about the talks after just 2 days but the longer history of failed bids for the l. S. E. And up other similar planned International Stock exchange mergers suggest the basic structural challenges may have eventually sunk the deal even if hong kongs conditions an early disclosure of the talks had not become issues. And as the talks of protests in hong kong have been raging much of the focus has been aimed at chinas extradition bill and understandably so however under reported in the wake of the turmoil has been climbing cost of living in the region recently our correspondent Michelle Greenstein was on the ground in hong kong where she documented the issue and filed this report. This is the peak an area notorious for its exclusivity since the British Colonial era and the single most expensive neighborhood in hong kong it overlooks the rest of the city and is home to billionaires bankers and celebrities its areas like this one that may call call one of the least affordable cities to live on earth internationally hong kong is known to be wealthy and prosperous but thats not the case for all its residents. One in 5 people is in poverty here and that number becomes one in 3 for the elderly and when it comes to housing over 200000 people live in what soco Hong Kong Social Services organization calls inadequate housing like these subdivided floods in a subdivided flat your bed is your living space kitchens and bathrooms are shared in this flat by 24 people some flats dont have kitchens and the rent is more expensive if you have your own toilet in hong kong i today. Which employs seelye shan as a Community Organizer with sopo i think that that money is not to. Step onto the 50. 00 and the face they dont have political power she tells me that on average families wait 5 and a half years to receive subsidized housing and if youre in an urban area its closer to 8 years and if youre young single and without a family it could be 20. I spoke with the leader of hong kongs Largest Labor organisation about this. Housing in hong kong is a big problem there isnt enough land and there are more than 10000 people who are qualified for you yet still waiting for Public Housing but the waiting period is very long especially for young people in the meantime. Im here bed maybe youre home i also spoke with tech chief u. N. A Founding Member and the former vice chair of the Democratic Party hong kongs Largest Political Party he left the party because of its unwillingness to have dialogue with beijing he says that while the extradition amendment which has now been withdrawn may have been the trigger for the current unrest it was never the full story many of. The young people there are angry about the Society People can get more and young people get nothing and cries of calling up are very fast thats mean. That the rich people get more and more. Distribution of resources is unfair so there are some people. About this this is the fundamental problem this is the root problem so at this moment we have the usual cop on the p. M. s and all the young people. In the Society Pressure pressure in addition to this an even distribution of resources deepening inequality in hong kong is fueled by the fact that the minimum wage has not kept up with inflation and that privatization often goes unchecked and we call it by all the economy and weve got to cut the government should not be privatizing a Public Services especially those Public Services that are used regularly privatization makes wages lower there should be more protection for employees and more workers rights if we dont achieve this economic disparity want to grow this disparity is a critical factor in causing instability in our society and tech thinks that despite Television Coverage its a small minority who actually want hong kong to be independent from china and that most hong kong are simply feeling unrepresented and see democracy as a win. To increase wages again housing and Better Living conditions home home people dont want the violence dont want the reformation this is for the. Local prophet to be seen. To the humble people the. Distribution of resources and the rich people get out a lot and the poor people. And he will be. Should do Something Special to him. Even to not be economic growth. But as other. How much of the us Corporate Press hungry for a reason to vilify the peoples republic of china during an unprecedented economic war characterized hong kongs unrest as a prodemocracy Movement Much of the underlying root conditions and fears of the average hong konger facing the rising cost of living go virtually unmentioned and its these conditions that make the situation in hong kong the perfect storm for a widespread protest movement especially among the young 5 and joining us now in the studio just back from hong kong is our t. V. Producer guest host of the news with rick sanchez and front of the show michel greenstein michel one of the experts you talk to the labor leader in this piece about the sheer lack of surface area to build on the scarcity of actual land which just takes the dynamics of inequality that cause housing costs renters to spiral to an extreme level in this case in hong kong give us a quick snapshot of the broader Real Estate Market is as extreme as the rental market given the wealth inequality in these lane constraints specific to hong kong firstly well since you brought up lending im pleased you brought that up because chief executive kerry lam actually last week talked about going out into the community and speaking to people she says from all walks of life to address the issue of lack of land supply and Affordable Housing which i think shows just how main stream of a perceived. Problem in this housing issue is in hong kong now in terms of the broader Real Estate Market the short answer to your question is yes i think the Property Market is the perfect microcosm for the broader issue of inequality in hong kong and hong kong the average home costs about 18. 00 times the median salary in hong kong and because of this special status that hong kong has as an autonomous region hong kong is very Market Driven right the government really cant and doesnt do much to reduce property prices and theres been this constant real estate bubble for years sustained by what many are calling a property Cartel Although its interesting in recent months you know given the current political crisis and these protest movement in hong kong the biggest developer is just the latest to actually announce that theyre really driving their prices down there a lot of these developers are a kind of defacto being forced to cut their prices one batch of these units in the calhoun area from the biggest developer in hong kong is now priced at 20 percent lower than current market levels in the area thanks to this protest movement interesting and all will get will be going back to singapore with christiane to the break where some are speculating that singapore could sue surpass hong kong in their sort of regional while you will read due to the protest movement during the hong kong economy did you get the sense that in hong kong they might be worried about falling behind in that region rather than we would singapore so on the ground i did not get the sense in hong kong that this is what people are thinking about but in terms of you know people in our profession right the broader picture perhaps Like International observers not only is this speculation this is already happening right hong kong investors from hong kong took a total of 1400000000. 00 from investments that used to be in hong kong and are now pumping that money into singapore and this is accounts of more than a quarter of 5200000000. 00 in total outbound Real Estate Investment from hong kong so not only is this you know being perceived as a problem were starting to see the fruits of you know people moving there that. Singapore absolutely direct financial nexus there very interesting michel greenstein archie correspondent thanks so much for your time thank you. I. Closing out the week there is one more small step of progress in the u. S. China trade fight you know incident was made on friday on Chinese State t. V. But the national you doesnt involve one tiny village and the ministry of commerce. China isnt going to be trying to accomplish how important a certain amount of america. To huntington is with mark preston and then i dont know if michael. Got us into this i dont suppose. It would still scheduled to take effect october 1st. Meanwhile u. S. President donald trump suggested on thursday that a socalled interim deal with china that would be aimed at simply restoring the pretrial tariff status quo before moving on the challenges around intellectual property and agricultural purchases with his usual level of precision and clarity trump told reporters its something we would consider i guess. And staying in asia for todays special theme show we catch up on the state of indias auto sector with lauren fix the car coach lauren weve been past due to do this segment for a while and really busy round up all the news about this deceleration in the indian auto sector so lets kick off with one statistic here 35000000 thats how many indians are employed in the Auto Industry generates 7 percent of indian g. D. P. According to the b. B. C. So lauren for those of us in the global audience who may not be familiar with his niche of the global Auto Industry give us a quick profile of the indian Auto Industrys role in the indian domestic economy domestic economy and this is rank in the overall global audie would khana me. Ok so 1st off youve got some pretty Major Players when it comes to the indian car industry we know about mahendra is a very well known name you know tata and chad war and they own land rover but theres also a partnership with suzuki when they are letting people go were reducing production actually stopping production of let go about a 1000000 of workers this is a big problem theres also cash crunch is going on and low Consumer Sentiment the total sales for india is down about 36 percent thats a 10. Month continual low and decline and theyre trying to do everything they can within their government theyve even offered a scrappage policy which we know does not work because it ends up happening is that people with that are wealthy end up purchasing cars and those that are really in need of vehicles arent youre noticing low decline in s. U. V. S trucks and even 2 wheeled vehicles which they use a lot of that includes bicycles and scooters but another indicator is youre noticing that even regular goods such as shampoo and spices and so theyre also on the decline the only thing thats on the incline is Television Sets youre looking at washing machines refrigerators and cell phones those are on the increase which is interesting because those are consumer goods were watching a really terrible sentiment thats going across the country of india and this is really a huge concern and the only way theyre going to turn that around is theyre going to have to adjust production to demand and that is a huge problem because they produce vehicles on a global basis and one more statistic here is 41 percent that was the percentage decline in auto sales for august thats a 10 straight monthly decline for the sector and the biggest monthly drop off in 20 years so what is the current predicament of the auto sector as we enter looks like you know not what they want to hear as we enter the month of september with the nerve variety and do all the celebrations kicking off a season where people are sort of in the mood to spend whats the timing here isnt it rather inconvenient to have the lower confidence going into it could be buying season. Right that could be very risky but theyre hoping that the going into the Holiday Season that theyre going to cause some excitement there or theyre hoping that the incentives to get people to purchase vehicles of any type to help bring jobs back into the factories right now letting go a 1000000 people is a huge impact on consumers not spending money especially when they come to automobiles or any form of transportation theyre hoping that the scrappage policy of releasing a little bit more cash into the economy and of course the Holiday Season will cause an increase in sales which could help the global basis when it comes to the indian car industry and of course theres also been the scandal in the indian Banking Industry which analysts say has decreased Credit Conditions and in turn to produce the car market theres also this factor of right Healing Services are people particular dont see the need to buy a car or would we looking at you suggested this downscale on the size of the auto immune Auto Industry for the forseeable future is that right thats probably going to be where happens is a downscale of the Auto Industry though they may have a scrappage policy like i said that may cause higher end vehicles to be purchased by the wealthier but those that dont have money will be continuing to use bicycles and other forms of transportation remember deedes got a huge footprint in that country that is a Ride Sharing Company and thats probably going to become more popular for those people that need to go longer distances remember this country tends to get their people in places difficult different than they do in the United States we get in a car use Public Transportation typically theyll know 3 or 4 people on a scooter so it is a little bit different yes so much to go and to hear we got to come back to this lauren fix the car coach thanks for your insight. Thank you. Time now for a quick break but stay tuned because when we come back we hand things back to christine singapore where she caught up with song saying one of the c. M. D. Private banking to dig through whats in the future for asian economies are going to break here are the market numbers at the close. This is a stick up from the water bottle found in the stomach of a fish the brand is part of the Cocacola Company which sells millions of bottles of soda every day the idea was that lets tell consumers there are the bad ones there the litter bugs are trying this way and history should be blamed for all this waste the company has long promised to reuse the plastic. Thats. A special projects funded. On the. Fun now the mountains of waste only grow higher. I dont. Recall know going to. The falls so. You can sleep. With bullets of the. But you will do the just show. Me she saw that. Bob will not be down to talk about you dont tell. The. Police if you pull the reports for the way. Walking back as trade war trenches begin to wind if only a little the future of asian economies is still in question kristie i managed to catch up with song saying wont of c. M. I. Be Private Banking in singapore to get his take on what he sees on the horizon for the region. I understand you have a very unusual way of looking at the economy through food so apparently spending behave various their habits and their consumption levels through Food Industry food and i mentioned mr india to use always want to remind people you know very simple concept where the economy growth all there is a recession can be just believe day to day. I suppose activities. Wake up home depressed about your job prospects or youre about to get fired you dont consume so if there is going to be across the board for everyone in your company you might be a Company Specific problem or if you see across all industry then its a country problem itself coming back to 2 days in terms of the ongoing secretly spew us its so primarily you have seen it affecting the many. We have seen industrial activity slow down but we havent seen a significant drag on the Services Sector typically Service Sector roughly about 7080 percent of the country g. D. P. 20 percent 30 percent from the socalled good sector. So what i tend to do to see whats happening on the ground by what people are spending on where the be enough to go and spend in the high end restaurant or whether its just carrying on the normal i saw typically coming to singapore specifically i think its more using food as a kind of our history and economy history of singapore which see 200 years ago when it was migrant comes to singapore so. Roughly plus european as well so thats the backdrop and culture of singapore we saw as we roll in to see years ago but now singapore being a global hub for businesses we certainly have seen a lot more interaction of Different Countries different nationality and food when they turn on the streets of singapore and restaurants are representing culture. So whether the restaurant get filled up or where the haka with different kinds of people and what theyre consuming all consuming can tell for a lot happening on the ground is so i always use the excuse me doing my job thats why so boss and im monitoring you know im here drinking beer drinking beer by mob serving was opening around the economy. Were seeing a more upbeat assessment just what people are spending on or what theyre consuming or whether things are quiet because you know the whole. You know being i suppose more prudent careful with the spending last quarter singapore is g. D. P. Actually contract. And the Manufacturing Industry has bare. So do you think right now that singapore is trying to pivot itself almost as you said like a services and more consumption based economy somewhere to watch china dead instead of primarily its i think pushing up or so singapore although it is singapore. The country it is really a very weird thing. So consumption from domestic standpoint isnt large enough to offset the drag external weakness in demand for goods and services and a similar to the 2 economies here which are most dependent on external demand is singapore and Hong Kong Hong kong and singapore exports or goods and services is twice the size of the g. D. P. So so the mystically can do to offset the drag so i suppose we had a contraction in the 2nd quarter growth mainly because of the small for several key major export items in the manufacture of goods particularly in electronics in certain chemicals that. And those are related to create in the goods and services the refs continue to be fairly resilient primarily so because they were Market Conditions remain still quite ok i mean if we look at the data is the way i think you see it for employment although all the is taking a bit longer for people looking for work especially in those industries which i suppose not actively hiring if you look at those in the sector in the Digital Space theyre not issue of jobs and Employment Opportunities itself saw what we will have to look for is whether the slowdown in the manufacturing side spillover the services we havent seen that in a meaningful or significant manner yet but theres something. Im watching out for and this is where again looking of food and Consumption Patterns and hopefully tell me a bit more when it comes do you think that theres anything that we glean from the singapore Capital Markets equities markets because as you mention you left the equities market back in 2015 when it started slowing down and last year there are actually had their worst year in terms of public. You know they only managed to raise 700000000. 00 which was down and then meanwhile there was a huge amount of outflows almost about 20000000000. 00 poured out and they singapore in Capital Market so do you think that there is concern that theres going to lack of liquidity both in that market as well as a secondary i suppose. To continue to be the hub for Financial Services the issue is you know all the big global banks Financial Services. In singapore but for the local species we saw as rich island rich more economy what. Beyond the large number of Government Companies listed here we should build up singapore and those that can pull in from outside especially related to the sector i mean once i think the one industry and one industry saying when they have done the well i suppose the best has been the real estate. Outside of that far more challenging i suppose again its just a case of for those company wanting to live in singapore is what very probably can i get that. Would induce me to being in singapore tends to be the real if its peace otherwise you do tend to see people you know go for and i thought you said i do you know if you are Malaysian Company you dont need to be in singapore know where you are we need to build my local boss the boss is from there running want you to be in care or want you to being in jakarta or in care or in bangkok or for those looking for a larger International Audience or the large market. It had been hong kong but who knows maybe the process ongoing process in hong kong may spill over but its hard to see so you might be in even more shanghai for the longer run out im only but i think this is one of the key challenge for those policymakers within singapores of the how to so what bohm along singapore. But i suppose the guineas is the money supply if it works would try to make it see where the most attractive source of growth come from derivative at least Everything Else by thing a. Country has to be a lot more challenging prosser capital is far more interesting in that if the region sees growth and opportunity come through singapore tends to be a conduit comes in through the region is so if the region also seeing slower growth. And just because growth generally slowing down Capital Markets activity slows down we tend to see it slows down in singapore as well so i think we took in there really is a down year just because the whole region may be softer. On an up year it is because you know a sense the tigers a regain a couple of their stripes and we can be bouncing on a little bit more as well but in the meantime i suppose its just you century trying to fly the flag for whatever they can. And thats it for this week. See you next time. Today there are good tennis and bad deadens the bad terrorists and those in yemen who the United States deems to be a threat the looked at it is those what in syria the cia and the u. S. Military were engaged in covert actions really throughout the world. Where they were assassinating populist leaders they were backing up the right way military juntas funding and arming death squads theres no phones and because theres always a small income for a really good thats good for profit. I think penury since crosstalk started as 10 years i think its time to shake things up maybe change the branding maybe the format here is what ive been thinking about next season related episodes filmed on an island 10 experts fight it out for a trophy what do you think ok a more affordable option 25. 00 text for. One red rose another suggestion geopolitical jeopardy parody no political cookout where we will literally. Believe its. Late night show its a rare format these days and its chief all you need is an old microphone in a printed banner but treat me with what i guess i can do this candle after politics ready gone wild like music. Ok crosstalk is not about hype its about meaning 10 years of talk and still going strong. Peter if you want to change something why dont we get rid of the goat. No that is too much. Faith in god. Was. I. Was. There was. Nothing. The taliban sends a clear message to donald trump in an exclusive interview with. The u. S. President to rethink his decision to offer these talks. Despite booming u. S. Oil exports Top Democrats unite in calling for a ban on fracking to find selves accused of paying into the rich and the tons. Classic british childrens t. V. Part to get fired from his job but over time. Youre watching International Live news update from austin jail here in moscow welcome to the program