plachon

"does the thai government have a retraining program for street girls

Any ideas  - SHOULD I TELL HER NOW or mai pen rai it?"

I think she's probably better off without her patron, who regards her as some kind of disposable dog. And what a fertile imagination DaveYo has!

You know you've been in Isaan too long:

- When you stop off at the restaurants in Sakhon Nakhon and end up eating your swap.

- When you actually get to enjoy the taste of Rover (or is it Lover) stew and sun-dried Fido strips.

You said it MaiChai! The govt's only refrain, loud and clear to foreigners these days is "WE DON'T WANT YOU, BUT WE WANT YOUR CASH!' or "Your love gives me such a thrill, but your love won't pay the bills, I want..........."

but didn't you love that little smoozle at the end with allowing "low paid journalists" to remain. I'm sure Shawn Crispin et al. at FEER are mighty relieved to hear that along with our v. own poster of the thread.

Vorranuch, please at least read Butterfly and my posts. We never once said it would come "tomorrow" and never once made any comparisons with Switzerland or other European countries. If any comparisons are to be made it is with certain S. American economies. These crashes do not happen in a vaccuum and the West is equally to blame for them (esp. the uncontrolled free flow of vast sums of capital across continents in seconds and the faliure of Bretton Woods institutions to actually help "developing nations"), but Thailand set itself up as a sitting duck for the last one, and it's doing it again. Go and read some of the references I've given in earlier posts from beginning to end, if you want to get some background.

The old cracks about short memories and ostriches are looking more accurate as this line goes on, eh 'Fly?

Will, you're starting to tread on v. dicey ground there.

Thailand IS a democracy in the most general sense of the word, and actually is a shining example for all its neighbours. You have to go as far as the Philippines before finding some where comparable and then a whole lot further after that. But, and it's a big BUT, it is not an automatic or given state of affairs, as all Thais who turned out on the streets in May 92 realise, and must be nurtured and valued, esp. the current freedom of the press (viz a viz the TV and mass media). They know well not to take it for granted and so at the moment are being v. jai yen, with Toxin's "excentricities".

You know you've been in T'land to long, when:

- You wear your crash helmet back to front and perched on top of your head

- You get your wife, 3 kids, pooch in the front basket and laundry on your moped and then do a Uey to go back and pick up mae-yai as well

- You wear your helmet as far as the intersection with the cop, then take it off as soon as he's outta sight

- You feel the moped is not prestigious enough and move straight up to a Honda SUV, by mortgaging your measly one rai of land and eating to eating nothing more extravagent than kwi-tiaow.

- You throw your Thai pooch over a temple wall and go down to Chatuchak and get a pedigree St Bernard.

You realise you can't afford to buy petrol for theSUV, feed both the St Bernard and your wife, so one of them has to go. Tricky choice, but hey, her phone calls were getting expensive.......................

Do me a favour Mrentoul "aren't even off the ground yet". Please go down and look at klong Dan - it's definitely off the mangrove swamp it was built on. And then, according to a front page report in your paper not more than 4 months ago, there are 57 (I think the figure was), waste water treatment projects built at mega millions of dollars sitting idle around the country, for one reason or another. Then there's Rasi Salai Dam and a whole load of others under the same K_C_M Project just wasting assets, in more ways than one. And I haven't even mentioned Hopewell yet, which you don't have to go that far to see. In fact, anyone who enters Thailand via Don Muang, wants to know what those megaliths are over the railway lines. Talking of airports, is nong Ngu Hao really gonna become the regional air hub or just another expensive (V. expensive ) mistake?

Get out of Bangers a bit and smell the flowers.

Sorry Mali, the comment was meant to be "tongue-in-cheek". The guy started out with stars in his eyes over this young woman(see first post) and ended up chasing after lonely Finns as an alternative (see last post). Nothing against Finns, you understand Mali, it's just the way the cookie's crumbled for our Romeo Caravelle.

Yeah, you sound cool enough, pretty calculating too and probably pretty too, I shouldn't wonder. Wow, the compliments come gushing today..............

Come on 'toul, 'fly and others, you're not just meekly giving up on this thread are you? It could be the one that decides whether you have a job or not in a few years time.

On the point of not seeing evidence of irrational spending habits and exuberance in the market, I'm wondering if i'm living in the same country as you Mrentoul. I would be a rich guy if i was given 10 baht for everyone in this province alone who's gone out and bought a new car (lots of plush SUV's and flash coupe's) on the basis of what, 10 - 20 k income per month. How do they do it? I keep asking myself. Alright there's usually a bit of funny money coming in if you're a karachagan, but it's lumpy (unless you're a cop), and not ideal for supporting a loan with. My only conclusion is, they are loaned up to the hilt, not thinking that interest rates are at a historically low rate in Thailand and there's only one way for them to go in the next couple of years. Then there's the loan on the TV, fridge, mobile, etc., not to mention the mortgage to pay off. Oh dear, the Repo Man's out the back. Now there's an industry with growth potential Butterfly, I'd lay some money on prospering. :cool:

No, should it do?

But 3,000 CIA spooks and gawd knows how many Chinese, Russian,etc, geeks of other countries security forces wandering the streets and the fact that the poor of BKK will be kicked into touch again, ought to worry the Thai people and their proud claims to never having been colonised. Corporatised and coca-colanised doesn't count I guess.

I see I'm going to have to work harder to convince the cautious optimists and dare I say it, ostriches. To Vorranuch, I'd say it's not going to be a bubble in the property market that is going to be the precursor of the next crash brewing at the moment, but far more complex factors, but which can largely traced back to a lack of addressing the old rot, eating away at the heart of the poles of the structure, and an almost messianic belief that one guy can lead the country to......whatever it is he sees is the destiny of Thailand. The country has never been in the particular position it now finds itself in, where one guy has an almost total control on the reigns (far more so than many of the military dictators of the past, where internal power struggles were much more apparent), and he can lead it down a particular road of his choosing, whether it wants to go or not. This may sound like an exaggeration, but I fear not.

For Mrentoul, who started this thread, but in the old one stated you were missing hard evidence that there was overheating at this stage and thought that the boys at BoT are more than qualified to pre-empt any untoward signals before they signal : DANGER (or words to that effect anyway). Firstly, I would say they made an extermely bad call last time around, and that was hot on the heels of the BBC scandal. Now apart from Rakesh Saxena, who fled to Canada and became a nice scapegoat, I don't think anyone has ever been brought to book for that one, apart from perhaps a few transfers. Now we're talking millions of $ going missing (nothing too unusual perhaps in LOS), and most of it on unsecured loans for overvalued ALRO land cheated from villagers for a few ,000 baht per rai. All the people who got away with that one are still living a life of Reilly, and more than a few are in the present govt., incl. Deputy AGric Minister, as one of the chief protagonists. What does this say about the PM's stated desire to have clean govt., and quash corruption? I could give a hundred other examples, but will spare you, people who read the domestic news and have been here more than a few years know well what is going on, but gradually become desensitized to it.

What has this to do with an economic crash in the making, apart from all the old suspects being in the driving seat again. The thing i'm working towards is that there is now a two decade span of mega-infrastucture projects being over-priced and under-engineered, which are going to start costing the country serious money in maintenance costs in the next few years. So you've got Toxin's new mega-projects which are costing the country a mint, there's a whole slew of under-performing or non-performing state projects (Klong Dan is a classic amongst these), and literally thousands of other performing, but poorly-built assets all needing costly maintenance (the highways are a good example inthis category), which are all going to bankrupt the country, when the economic turnaround comes, as I've predicted in the next 2-5 years. Again not the definitive answer, just one more piece in the jigsaw, which will combine to precipitate the Big One.

And as for the wisdom of the  BoT, I'd point you to an article that appeared in the Business Post on 8/8/03, which tried to reassure punters that a crash wasn't in the making and in any case, would be prevented by monetary policy in time. Written by no less than 3 "experts" at the Office of Central Banking Studies, BoT, it only served to heighten my concern that the BoT only has a very shaky grip on the real world of economics, politics, warts and all, rather than increase my confidence that "things are under control". Make your own judgment, but I would draw your attention to their level of maths ability, which I always thought is an economist's bread and butter, evidenced in the following statement:

"Only one-fourth (40%) of equity (housing) booms are followed by a bust". Bit like Toxin's calculations over the number of people who'll be buying the 1 M Baht VIP card, eh?

Interestingly though, they didn't seem to want to deny that a bubble is underway with Thai assets and stockmarket.

Dagnabit! I'd just written a long and decisive answer providing some of the background and facts to the last crash and why I believe another is in the making in the next 2- 5 years (NOT "imminently" note) and was just near to finishing it, after 40 mins hard work, and ................. the power crashed and I lost the whole <deleted> lot. Peeved, to say the v. least, and I can't be arsed to repeat that exercise over again nor have the time, I'm afraid Mrentoul.

What I would recommend is you unearth, as I did last night, some of the old B. Post mid - year and year end Economic Reviews for 96/97 and you'll see all the "experts", with their fancy formulas and hundreds of years collective experience DID NOT see the crash coming. Maybe in the days running up to July 2, when the baht was being furiously defended by BoT, they speculated that it may be floated, but that is not the same thing, Kreetha, as predicting a crash that spread from Thailand (ground zero) round half of Asia and beyond. i stand by my original assertion.

I would also recommend you read a book by Walden Bello et al., (1978)called a Siamese Tragedy. Development and Disintegration in Modern Thailand (available from White Lotus publishers, which neatly breaks down the cause and effect of the '97 crash. Nothing much has changed since, only a v. powerful PM has got in on a populist and nationalist ticket and is leading his country like the Pied Piper.  

Allow me to quote from page 8:

"Bangkok, in short, became a debtor's instead of a creditor's market, and the easy money, easy credit, and easy terms proved very seductive to the various sectors of Thai society. Thew proliferation of buildings, cars, and shopping malls created the aura of widespread prosperity that at the same time masked  the fact that purchasing power did not have a basis in real wealth but was being artificially created via credit extended from external sources. Consumption and the contraction of credit became the password to the goodlife, and saving and delayed gratification became not virtues but anachronistic habits that it would be stupid to adhere to in an era of easy money."

Now the credit is even easier than 97 due to low interest rates and there's even less incemntive to save (>1 % interest in most accounts). So it's speculate, speculate and speculate. meanwhile flows of foreign money on the stock exchange are being eased up, which means they'll get out bloody quickly too when it turns sour a few years down the road.

I don't expect to have convinced you Mrentoul, but my lost post (oh, why can't these shops have UPS?) would have helped and i would encourage you to read some more into the roots of the last crash. As the saying goes: Two swallows, do not a summer make"

You got it Tutsi! Nevermind the rice cooker, tied on a bit of string and floated off on a helium balloon or flushed down the khazi alternatives - Thai women can be really inventive, so don't say you haven't been warned!

either you must have the most sweet, innocent and polite wife in the Kingdom, or she's been keeping things from you that a man ought to know. On second thoughts, innocence might be bliss, on this particular score. Now are those herbivorous, omnivorous or carnivorous shrimps you wanted to raise?   ???

your English is great mate, it's just your prejudices that suck.

you just try going into an Isaan village looking for "good, clean, cheap sex" and see how far you get. Chok dee hombre! And what kind of "hunger" were you referring to exactly?

Sorry, thought anyone with a Thai spouse knew that old joke. How long you been hitched Tutsi?

Seems like one of "Engorged Member's" posts have been emasculated - hope it wasn't a country duck responsible mate.

I was always thought those wee shrimps they put in the prawn cocktails were the marine variety (like from Norway), but am willing to be corrected on this. I'd never thought they came from Thailand. For a start, you'd only get one or less per glass, if they're anything like the FW prawns we get up here in Isaan. Big buggers: 10 - 15 per kilo. Great on a barbie or in tomyam, but not what Doris and Fred expect in their prawn cocktails, i'd hazard.

Well adjudicated there George.

But going back to Mrentoul's point of "why isn't he reading about it", I'd refer him back to my last post in the old thread. Look through it again and the answer should be staring you in the face. Even up to the day before the Bank of Thailand floated the baht, your paper and all the other wise papers were...... none the wiser. Newspapers and economic mags excel at producing post facto news, they don't specialise in crystal ball gazing. But when their writers do make predictions, they tend towards the positive outlooks, they don't want to rock the boat or bite the hand the feeds them. Just look in the Business Post for confirmation of self-serving drivel. Bring back Column 9 if you want to give the section a bit more credibility and impartiality.

But this is going off the thread again. The point I was trying to make in the old thread and will make again, is that bubbles, economic crashes and events that are likely to occur more than 2 years down the road, are the stuff of anecdotes and not hard facts, simply because they haven't yet occurred. Meanwhile national public debt is far greater than it was in 97, household debt is far higher too and climbing rapidly, there's a property bubble afoot again, while Thailand's basic competitiveness I don't see being as far higher. In fact, it's slipping back compared to several other countries. The money being spent now on all Toxin's hare-brained schemes is popular, is stimulating local consumption and will keep him in power for another term, BUT it will also lead to bankruptcy for the country. Pure speculation of course, but what do you expect?

Tutsi,

Shrimps you should be OK, but if she changes her mind and suggests ducks............then you need to worry.

BTW, I'm not sure if the so-called FW prawns (Macrobrachium rosenbergii I believe) are exported or if it is just the tiger prawns - something to check into, along with all the production costs, esp, juveniles (from marine hatcheries), feed and labour requirements. The temptation always is to stock too many to boosts profits, then problems of disease surface and it's back to the old Thai remedy of anti-biotics for everything. Doing a training course and learning the pitfalls from other farmers, is the most crucial aspect for success- not just looking at selling price. Might seem high, but what are the profit margins?