ronz28

You need the right pick up line. Just tell them you are a falang and then tell them the real secret to whiter skin is to hang around you because it rubs off onto whoever you are with.

This is a Thai matter and only they will resolve it. Speculation that the US would intervene is nonsense.

The red mess that's destroying the Thai economy will sooner or later get to the Thai Baht. I hate to see this happening but I am just a falang observer and its up to them.

I'm in the states but am controlling eye pressure to about 14 using a generic of Cosopt called Dorzolamide HCL-Timolol Maleate Ophthalmic Solution 22.3 mg/6.8 mg per pl made by HiTech Pharmacal (one drop in each eye morning and evening.

and same dosage of Alphagan P (brimonidine tartrate ophthalmic solution) 0.1%

I have also had a laser treatment to bring down the pressure as my high was close to 30 and the drops were only bringing pressure down to about 20-22.

Blue cross blue shield pays for most of this and negotiates/gets huge price reductions with doctors and pharmacies. Costs me $65 every three months as a copay on Alphagan P and no copay on the generic. Insurance covered all but a $30 copay on the laser treatment. Prices without insurance are generally ridiculous here. However, Walmart pharmacy has best prices on a lot of meds here... they charge me $10 for 3 months of my generic cholesterol pill and insurance pays $8 of that so I pay $2 for the 90 day supply.

Are there sufficient Army troops in Bangkok to support the PMs goals? I heard through relatives that an Army unit from Kanchanaburi would not be permitted into Bangkok so they currently have no plans to go in to support troops there. Do the Reds have some sort of choke hold on the highways to Bangkok to prevent further Army troops from getting in without fighting their way in?

Picture please. Why would a British woman carry a forged passport and not get a real one? Has she confessed yet? Oh, I guess some of that is answered in the linked article. I wonder why she did it?

Put em in jail and throw away the key. I don't care where they are on the planet, dirt bags like this need to never see the light of day again!

a few words for you( by the way- you are in a form of prison yourself ,sorry to have to tell you this( it does some of coures))

1- you pay the bill

2- you make the crooks richer-and angrier, one man told me how upon his release he arranged the murder/death of an innocent person of country that jailed him( by a clever means one can find on the net)

what makes this bad is that the "offence" was procession of very small amount of LSD

he claims he was beaten, lost his wife, and was filled with hate,i actually took some time out to look into this.He told me he no longer has this hate because of what he did.

3- prison does, not, in so many cases, not all,s work and cause the opposite effect

4- prisons are schools of crime

next

" distrust all those to whom the impulse to punish is powerful"

"the worst deeds like poison weeds

Bloom well in prison air

It is only that what is good in man

That wastes and withers there"

oscar wilde

I don't give a rat's behind. Real scumbags deserve to be destroyed but that's usually not possible. Would you prefer to slap them on the wrist and turn them back out to resume their criminal ways???? You think a criminal doesn't learn more criminal ways on the streets? You deserve to be a big time victim.

I could be mistaken but you could be referring to rice vinegar or rice wine vinegar. Among other things, it is an ingredient in Thai sweet chili sauce.

Like he said, it must be clear rice vinegar or rice wine vinegar. Nothing else will do.

I think its a disgusting fashion promoted around the world by certain mindless media and opportunistic people that will gladly disfigure beautiful skin for their own personal gain. Its too bad she got suckered into a terrible fashion trend but that's all it is. Someday she will probably try a laser treatment, etc. to get rid of it.

My banks have 1-800 numbers does that work for you? Also online chat with bank.

Put em in jail and throw away the key. I don't care where they are on the planet, dirt bags like this need to never see the light of day again!

You may be under estimating or don't remember the cost of maintaining your good health in your home country. Maybe you have not been hit by health care costs in your home country. I have recently, and just just for a relatively simple operation called UPPP lasting 45 minutes to stop my snoring in connection with sleep apnea. I was in the hospital for about 23 hours (they turn you out withing 23 hours so the insurance company charges me for higher copays under "outpatient" benefits). The bills by each of these health care providers follow:

Surgeon $4,772

Anesthesiologist $931

Hospital $21,331.88

Well the insurance company settled with each of the above for the following amounts

Surgeon $918.92

Anesthesiologist $744.80

Hospital $2,367.00

My copays were

Surgeon $137.84

Anesthesiologist $111.72

Hospital $354.97

I live in a low cost of living area of the US. My costs would have been $300 more but I had already satisfied a $300 annual deductible due to the $950 sleep study I had to partially pay with the deductible. That's in addition to the $180 charge (my copay was $20) from the family doctor who does an initial referral to the surgeon and then settles the $180 bill with Blue Cross Blue Shield for $95.10.

So if you don''t have/pay for insurance I guess you pay the full charge and I doubt if a doctor/hospital would negotiate much with you on his fees so most people really need health insurance and it isn't cheap.

Dentists are expensive too relative to costs in Thailand. My wife had a three tooth bridge replaced at a cost of $3,131 recently. My recent routine 6 month checkup and cleaning was $133.

Maybe Thailand isn't so bad after all unless you want to roll the dice and do not carry health insurance or live in a country where the government will pay the bill in full for you.

Americans built the deep water port at Sattahip to bring in its larger ships, the airbase at Utapao sufficient to land B52s and the highways to airbases upcountry all to get bombs to the planes that bombed Vietnam. I worked in Bangkok from 68-70 and Pattaya was hardly on the map. I went there once and had to go past an ice making company where we got directions to go down a dirt road to get to a place that rented beach side bungalows. Nice, beautiful beach and tropical then but that's the last time I've been to there as I reside in the US now. If Americans built Pattaya as it is now, it was top secret. Everyone wanted to be in Bangkok then.

The red shirt leaders are responsible for THIS problem. They have gone beyond protests to insurrection and, to me, have lost credibility.

The resolution will still need to involve cooperation between the government and the Red Shirt leaders. The Red shirts have made their point but need to go home now and continue their drive for fair treatment within the Government and media. Anyone (the men in black?) that started the gunfire needs to be jailed or executed.

You guys need open carry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYWz7BEEg1k

and a Winchester Defender 12 ga. pump shotgun for your home.

Your vehicle can be considered a weapon too.

Just when things started to look better, eight more US Banks failed this week-

http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html

FRAUD!!!

Goldman Sachs, which emerged relatively unscathed from the financial crisis, was accused of securities fraud in a civil suit filed Friday by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which claims the bank created and sold a mortgage investment that was secretly devised to fail.

The move marks the first time that regulators have taken action against a Wall Street deal that helped investors capitalize on the collapse of the housing market. Goldman itself profited by betting against the very mortgage investments that it sold to its customers.

The suit also named Fabrice Tourre, a vice president at Goldman who helped create and sell the investment.

The instrument in the S.E.C. case, called Abacus 2007-AC1, was one of 25 deals that Goldman created so the bank and select clients could bet against the housing market. Those deals, which were the subject of an article in The New York Times in December, initially protected Goldman from losses when the mortgage market disintegrated and later yielded profits for the bank.

As the Abacus deals plunged in value, Goldman and certain hedge funds made money on their negative bets, while the Goldman clients who bought the $10.9 billion in investments lost billions of dollars.

According to the complaint, Goldman created Abacus 2007-AC1 in February 2007, at the request of John A. Paulson, a prominent hedge fund manager who earned an estimated $3.7 billion in 2007 by correctly wagering that the housing bubble would burst.

Goldman let Mr. Paulson select mortgage bonds that he wanted to bet against — the ones he believed were most likely to lose value — and packaged those bonds into Abacus 2007-AC1, according to the S.E.C. complaint. Goldman then sold the Abacus deal to investors like foreign banks, pension funds, insurance companies and other hedge funds.

But the deck was stacked against the Abacus investors, the complaint contends, because the investment was filled with bonds chosen by Mr. Paulson as likely to default. Goldman told investors in Abacus marketing materials reviewed by The Times that the bonds would be chosen by an independent manager.

Mr. Paulson is not being named in the lawsuit.

In recent months, Goldman has repeatedly defended its actions in the mortgage market, including its own bets against it. In a letter published last week in Goldman’s annual report, the bank rebutted criticism that it had created, and sold to its clients, mortgage-linked securities that it had little confidence in.

“We certainly did not know the future of the residential housing market in the first half of 2007 anymore than we can predict the future of markets today,” Goldman wrote. “We also did not know whether the value of the instruments we sold would increase or decrease.”

The letter continued: “Although Goldman Sachs held various positions in residential mortgage-related products in 2007, our short positions were not a ‘bet against our clients.’ ” Instead, the trades were used to hedge other trading positions, the bank said.

In a statement provided in December to The Times as it prepared the article on the Abacus deals, Goldman said that it had sold the instruments to sophisticated investors and that these securities “were popular with many investors prior to the financial crisis because they gave investors the ability to work with banks to design tailored securities which met their particular criteria, whether it be ratings, leverage or other aspects of the transaction.”

Goldman was one of many Wall Street firms that created complex mortgage securities — known as synthetic collateralized debt obligations — as the housing wave was cresting. At the time, traders like Mr. Paulson, as well as those within Goldman, were looking for ways to short the overheated market.

Such investments consisted of insurance-like policies written on mortgage bonds. If the mortgage market held up and those bonds did well, investors who bought Abacus notes would have made money from the insurance premiums paid by investors like Mr. Paulson, who were negative on housing and had bought insurance on mortgage bonds. Instead, defaults spread and the bonds plunged, generating billion of dollars in losses for Abacus investors and billions in profits for Mr. Paulson.

For months, S.E.C. officials have been examining mortgage bundles like Abacus that were created across Wall Street. The commission has been interviewing people who structured Goldman mortgage deals about Abacus and other, similar instruments. The S.E.C. advised Goldman that it was likely to face a civil suit in the matter, sending the bank what is known as a Wells notice.

Such investments consisted of insurance-like policies written on mortgage bonds. If the mortgage market held up and those bonds did well, investors who bought Abacus notes would have made money from the insurance premiums paid by investors like Mr. Paulson, who were negative on housing and had bought insurance on mortgage bonds. Instead, defaults spread and the bonds plunged, generating billion of dollars in losses for Abacus investors and billions in profits for Mr. Paulson.

For months, S.E.C. officials have been examining mortgage bundles like Abacus that were created across Wall Street. The commission has been interviewing people who structured Goldman mortgage deals about Abacus and other, similar instruments. The S.E.C. advised Goldman that it was likely to face a civil suit in the matter, sending the bank what is known as a Wells notice.

Mr. Tourre was one of Goldman’s top workers running the Abacus deal, peddling the investment to investors across Europe. Raised in France, Mr. Tourre moved to the United States in 2000 to earn his master’s in operations at Stanford. The next year, he began working at Goldman, according to his profile in LinkedIn.

He rose to prominence working on the Abacus deals under a trader named Jonathan M. Egol. Now a managing director at Goldman, Mr. Egol is not being named in the S.E.C. suit.

Goldman structured the Abacus deals with a sharp eye on the credit ratings assigned to the mortgage bonds associated with the instrument, the S.E.C. said. In the Abacus deal in the S.E.C. complaint, Mr. Paulson pinpointed those mortgage bonds that he believed carried higher ratings than the underlying loans deserved. Goldman placed insurance on those bonds — called credit-default swaps — inside Abacus, allowing Mr. Paulson to short them while clients on the other side of the trade wagered that they would not fail.

But when Goldman sold shares in Abacus to investors, the bank and Mr. Tourre only disclosed the ratings of those bonds and did not disclose that Mr. Paulson was on other side, betting those ratings were wrong.

Mr. Tourre at one point complained to an investor who was buying shares in Abacus that he was having trouble persuading Moody’s to give the deal the rating he desired, according to the investor’s notes, which were provided to The Times by a colleague who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to release them.

In seven of Goldman’s Abacus deals, the bank went to the American International Group for insurance on the bonds. Those deals have led to billions of dollars in losses at A.I.G., which was the subject of an $180 billion taxpayer rescue. The Abacus deal in the S.E.C. complaint was not one of them.

That deal was managed by ACA Management, a part of ACA Capital Holdings, which changed its name in 2008 to Manifold Capital Holdings.

Goldman at first intended for the deal to contain $2 billion of mortgage exposure, according to the deal’s marketing documents, which were given to The Times by an Abacus investor.

On the cover of that flip-book, it says that the mortgage bond portfolio would be “selected by ACA Management.”

In that flip-book, it says that Goldman may have long or short positions in the bonds. It does not mention Mr. Paulson or say that Goldman was in fact short.

The Abacus deals deteriorated rapidly when the housing market hit trouble. For instance, in the Abacus deal in the S.E.C. complaint, 84 percent of the mortgages underlying it were downgraded by rating agencies just five months later, according to a UBS report.

It takes time for such mortgage investments to pay out for investors who short them, like Mr. Paulson. Each deal is structured differently, but generally, the bonds underlying the investment must deteriorate to a certain point before short-sellers get paid. By the end of 2007, Mr. Paulson’s credit hedge fund was up 590 percent.

Mr. Paulson’s firm, Paulson & Company, is paid a management fee and 20 percent of the annual profits that its funds generate, according to a Paulson investor document from late 2008 titled “Navigating Through the Crisis.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/business...ml?pagewanted=2

A declaration of war against the Thai government was stupid. After all the restraint the Thai government has shown, its time to enforce the rule of law and the circus needs to pack up their tents and go home. The people that declared war should be found and put in jail for sedition as they have gone far beyond mere protests.

When someone passes on it may be a real challenge for others to figure out where you put all the information that is needed to determine the scope of your estate and information to help settle it. Can you imagine someone trying to look through all your stuff to piece together what you have without any guidance from you? Wills are necessary but are usually general and don't spell out all the details of what you have because what you have is constantly changing.

You might try maintaining a notebook with plastic pages that you can insert documents in such as copies of recent bank statements, stock accounts, car titles, house deeds, evidence of payoff of mortgages, birth certificates, marriage certificates, copy of pension statements or other earnings statements, life insurance policy pages, tax returns, computer accounts and passwords, credit card statements..... just anything that would be helpful to someone trying to settle your estate.

May not be totally up to date when you pass but at least it should give your beneficiary a clue as to most of the account numbers, policy numbers, etc. to get the latest balances, etc. from.

Then there is the problem of protecting that accumulated data until it is needed but you already have that problem anyway.

And don't forget to discuss this with and show it to the person and an alternate that you will entrust this to so they know what to look for and where to find it when it is needed.

Public Broadcasting Service in USA recently did a story on Sal Kahn, an ex hedge fund guy who decided to give back to the world and teach over the internet using teaching nuggets on a variety of topics that students have difficulty with. Students around the world are listening to his Youtube videos to gain an understanding of topics they need extra help on. The variety of topics from basic addition to photosynthesis that he teaches for free on YouTube are listed here

http://www.khanacademy.org/

Click on any of the topics and it takes you directly to the YouTube video or alternatively you can do a search on YouTube. Its mostly math, science and business related and is a wealth of free teaching that everyone can learn from.

Students like the idea of being able to repeat the lessons as many times as needed to get what they don't understand.

I wonder if seeing a guy teach math in English might help Thai students (including college students) to better understand English as well as the subject being taught??

I have listened to several of his videos on the world financial crisis and he is very good. Anyone or your students had any experience with the Kahn You Tube videos as a teaching aide?

Make him pay the taxes on the gain on the sale of his shares and a 20%? penalty for weaseling out of it. Taking all of the family's wealth earned during the time he was in office without a calculation and connection to specific issues is just too much, smells of dirty politics and doesn't allow for any settlement and healing over the issues.

I did a WindowsXP update offered for my Sound Blaster sound card recently and lost the sound but found a temporary work around. I should never have done that hardware update as it was working fine before the update and had to uninstall it and get a recommended driver from the manufacturer- Sony. However, now every time I restart my computer there is no sound to the speakers until I go click on Start, Accessories, Entertainment, volume control and then slide the Wave/MP3 slider to Max from Min (no sound). I don't know why it keeps going back to Min with every computer restart and eliminating sound from youtube videos, etc. until I go through this process. Its supposed to remember the setting but it isn't and keeps going to No sound with every start up. I understand your frustration with Microsoft Windows and some day I am sure I will come across a solution for mine.

I am currently listening to The Big Short by Michael Lewis and find it to be an interesting explanation of how we got into the Financial Crisis and the techniques people used to make money on it.

http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/products/...UseBVCookie=Yes

even better than No One Would Listen by Harry Markopolos on the Madoff ponzi scheme

http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/products/...UseBVCookie=Yes

Its amazing how the crooks fooled all the due diligence experts, auditors and regulators including the US Securities and Exchange Commission yet others were smart enough to make a ton of money on the failures and frauds or at least avoid losses.

Bloom’s solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology is an “energy game-changer” and a “power plant in a box.” Something Thailand will eventually produce once the technology is licensed. Hopefully, Thailand won't waste a pile of money on nuclear before it figures out that current designs are just too costly and dangerous for it over the long term compared to the alternatives.

http://www.investmentu.com/IUEL/2010/March...technology.html

Did Thailand ever replace the battery in its one Tsunami warning buoy that the US contributed to them or is that still too expensive to protect Phuket?... And they will safely oversee the design, build and operation of nuclear power plants? BS