placnx

5 hours ago, moutamine said:

4 hours ago, car720 said:

106 dead as of this morning.

It would be interesting to know about how long (on average) from infection it takes for someone to die. From that we can extrapolate a mortality rate by going back that number of days to see how many infections had then been reported. Are we between 5 and 10 per cent?

For readers interested in facts, the link on post #5 is quite interesting, but highly technical.

6 hours ago, Christie Paul said:

The EU is tanking - capital flows to the US are enormous - restrictive policies have created recession - ECB a zombie holding 40% of debt and 12 trillion in outstanding negative interest rate bonds - what a mess. The UK has climbed out of what could be described as a burning dumpster.

The contradictions of the Euro functioning in seriously different economies, e.g. Greece/southern tier and Germany, have yet to be dealt with. Germany seems incapable of recognizing its duty to support less fortunate members, so now they are all in an apparently inescapable deflation.

10 hours ago, webfact said:

China announced a ban of all flight to the province after February 7. 

6 hours ago, Tarteso said:

What a sh**t!  Why not today? Or last week? What are they waiting?

Hopefully, they will now stop sending more tourists and use these ongoing flights to repatriate the Chinese tourists already in CM.

Does the UK really have to accord US employees at an airbase - and family members - full diplomatic immunity? Posters keep mentioning Embassy personnel, but this seems a different case. Rather it could as some discussed involve a lesser immunity attached only to official duties, in which case the US State Dept is abusing diplomatic privilege. If only Britain would stop admitting family members on diplomatic passports, the matter would be so much clearer.

It's unlikely that Burma will reform itself. Eventually this may well lead to disinvestment and cancelation of aid programs by all excepting ASEAN and China. So will becoming a Chinese protectorate be a better outcome than a climbdown from the fiction that Rohingyas do not exist? Can Suukyi find a way to mitigate the intense racism propagated by radical monks!! So far her "leadership" is falling short.

Maybe China can send peacekeepers to Rakhine and displace the Burmese army et al who seem incapable of peaceable intervention. One problem with this is that China does not favor the concept of autonomy which is where Rakhine should be headed.

An excellent documentary on the transfer of the entire population of Chagos is appearing on Al Jazeera, available online:

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2019/11/paradise-chagos-islanders-fight-justice-191117140229313.html

This would permit the central government to further track an individual's behavior, even further constraining individual liberty. It would tie in well with the developing "social credit system". It's just further fulfillment of the nightmare of a technologically enabled totalitarian state.

The West, especially the US, has the most to blame for this development. Without the empowerment of China since 1972 (Nixon/Kissinger in China), this would never have happened. But "expert" people with little or no knowledge of Chinese culture and history have brought us to this point. Admitting China to the WTO was just another grave misstep in the decline of Western politics and economy.   

17 hours ago, rak sa_ngop said:

Why not make your own gin. There are lots of botanical kits available on-line (not sure how easy to slip them in by post to Thailand). You can buy cheap vodka, or even cheaper is Thai neutral spirit (40pc ABV only) for about 150 baht a bottle, and infuse your own juniper etc flavours.

 

I tried doing the same with toasted French oak chips that I bought in the UK to make whisky, but the results were undrinkable. Too much nasty wood taste. I will have to try again.

Over 50 years ago I was with my Dad for the summer in a small town in Germany. Since he couldn't get bourbon, he got schnaps and put it in a 20-liter glass bottle with charred oak sticks, then slow cooked for 24 hours or so. It was pretty good.

1 hour ago, timendres said:

In my opinion, the fault goes back much further. Both the Treasury and the Fed are to blame for the bailouts of the S&L industry in the 80's, and LTC in the 90's, which cemented the concept of "Too Big To Fail", resulting in a major shift in risk analysis. Had those two failures been allowed to unfold naturally, the short term pain would have been greater, but the long term stability of the system would have been stronger.

 

This was exaggerated by congress repealing the Glass-Steagall act, which prevented the banks from intermingling their reserve and trading capital, putting depositors at unnecessary risk, and increasing the instability of the system overall.

 

Finally, the US congress is also to blame for not being more diligent on spending, resulting in government debt levels that now create an enormous risk if the Fed allows interest rates to move back to normal levels, as well as putting a huge burden on the bond markets to swallow all of that US debt issuance.

It's all a continuum, so we can cite precursor causes of any situation.

The bailout in the 1980s was a result of deregulation at a time when interest rates were crazy due to Fed policy under Volcker (up to 20%). I'd say that this Volcker policy was a mistake, that much lower rates would have achieved a satisfactory result without so much distortion. Anyway, via deregulation when people suddenly had alternatives to bank deposits, they withdrew their savings which the S&Ls were using to finance mortgages. These S&Ls were then practically insolvent and were taken over and looted by crooks with help from 5 senators.

While the repeal of Glass-Steagall is often blamed, as important is the lax enforcement of existing laws, by the Fed and other bank regulators. To some extent this was by ideologically motivated intent.

These very high rates also led to a very high US dollar. This was resolved by the Plaza Accord in 1985. Could we possibly have such international cooperation today?

In the 2007-09 crisis, the free market purists were advocating quick foreclosure, moving on. This was an ideological position divorced from reality, perhaps motivated by greed. Mortgages are regulated by state law, so foreclosures in some places dragged on for years, often due to dodgy paperwork. Had it all hit at once, perhaps we would have had meltdown!!

Unfortunately, we cannot possibly go back to "normal" interest rate levels anytime soon. Just look what happened last year when the Fed tried raising rates. These low rates have generated a monstrous international debt bomb that when triggered will cascade back & forth. It could take ages to resolve, sorry to say. The US national debt is a small problem in comparison.

In the future, perhaps we will blame the whole mess on the internet!

Germany certainly bears great responsibility for negative rates in Europe due to its excessive budget surplus mentality. It should have been helping the other Euro countries reflate their economies, but Germans have difficulty getting over the disastrous economic aftermath of WW I when they were assessed unaffordable reparations.

As for the US, the fault does not lie with the Fed. Rather it is the failure of the Treasury Dept, i.e. ministry of finance, to deal effectively with the economic crisis by devising a program to prevent unnecessary foreclosures. While the Fed could reflate the stock market, the very important housing market limped along for 10 years and in some regions had not recovered to 2006 levels 11-12 years later. This recovery needed to happen in around four years to prevent dislocation of the American economic model where most families save through home ownership, in the thought that real estate always goes up!!! That delusion is dispelled.

Nonetheless, a new model has not really replaced this, so many people face uncertainty - not good for economic stability. There are several companies that together control hundred of thousands of home rental properties, mostly for young urbanites and movers to suburbs who would otherwise be buying a first home. That's great to exploit this popped bubble, but the reality is that home ownership has only gone down 5% or so from the peak, around 65% of households. The upside is that people who rent can up and move to the other side of the country to find new work. But mobility is not the end-all. Most people still live their lives close to where they grew up.

Americans definitely need to reorganize their mortgage system so that the next downturn, probably worse than 2007-09, will not further kill off wealth accumulation  of the 99%. The next downturn, coming pretty soon, will further entrench negative rates. I cannot but feel gloomy about our economic future with stagnant "leadership" in the principal capitals. 

On ‎10‎/‎14‎/‎2019 at 6:15 PM, Dcheech said:

My 45 days before extension date rolls around this weekend. My money has been seasoning for more than two months. A couple questions as I have not done it this way before. Besides my other documents, I go to my bank and get;

 

1) Bank letter, (valid for 7 days)

2) A bank statements showing all activity in the account. In my case for three months  since I opened the account. ---------------------- I get these two from the Bank, the day before then 

I also need:

 

3) “A copy of every page of my passbook which I updated on my way to CM IMM early, very early, in the morning.” ---- copy from tracyb-----

 

That last one, I am not for sure exactly how I go about getting it. I have been told I need that done on the same day I submit my application/renewal docs.  Now just to be clear -  that is where you make a deposit or withdrawal on your account, showing activity (?) And then make copies of every page of the bank book. This is done on the same day I make my application??

 

If that is so, I have to wait until the bank opens, and then make copies at a copy shop when it opens. This will put me at Immigration at about 930-10 o’clock in the morning. At the earliest.  

My questions – Are all of the above steps correct for the 800K method? And regarding step 3. Is there any way to do that so I can get to immigration earlier than say 930??  I also realize I need to bring my updated bank book with me besides the copies to the IO.

 

Any help, advice, directions, appreciated.

 

Thank You.

CNX: I did 800K extension yesterday. My helper arrived around 7:30 AM with the documents and a POA and was told that I would have to come back in person to get a queue number. So I got there about 40 min later, got queue 9. My bank letter was from 17th but update on passbook was 15th, less than a week. IO said that they would accept if latest passbook update was 4-5 days before, so I had to go out to update passbook. The passbook had only monthly entries for transactions for Jul/Aug since I failed to update during those months, so the bank's 3-month printout was essential to show activity detail.

Thanks, bristolboy, for the Pew research. The recession in the EU is likely to get worse, and when Germany refuses to spend some of its surplus to revive the EU economy, I suspect that more countries will tend to the Greece profile. This would be the vulnerable ones, notably Italy. Perhaps in the case of Spain, the populist movement will have a resurgence if the economy sinks again.

To respond to this writer replying to my post #15, I will refer to the numbers he has inserted before my quoted paras in his post #19 - see my response further below.

6 hours ago, puipuitom said:

1) So, YOU think, if YOU leave any club/organisation, this club has to continue to negotiate with you on the terms YOU can leave ? The EU = Union of States, with free movement of goods, capital and people amount this union. If the UK wants to leave, then.. L E A V E  ! Consequences follow.

 

2) EU Bureaucrats ONLY and ONLY have to follow up what is decided in the EU Council ( of prime) ministers of all EU member states ( same civil servants in the UK have to follow the UK Government). The EU Commission ( kind of ministers) only have to work out / come with suggestions to the EU council. The EU Parliament only has in some cases a veto right.

 

3) Borders are NOT to make an occasion to stamp something in a passport, but to avoid smuggling etc. These smugglers try to find loopholes in a border defence. So, a check.. a few miles away, is opening a border, everything can pass.

 

4) look to smuggling: NONSENSE to give any importer a kind of free-cars based on previous inspections.

 

5) Ireland has the duty to protect the outside bonder of the EU. Impossible they can make agreements different as the entire Union, unless a sea border between Eire and the rest of the EU.

 

6) The free crossing of the inter-Irish border is agreed and signed as Good Friday agreement. This "backstop" was created on demand of the British to find a way to keep this border open. With appropriate solution later, this guarantee = backstop could be succeeded by anything better.

His Unendless Genius, Unlimited Wisdom, Boris the Liar, thought in Berlin he could find a solution in 30 days.  Yes in technology where we do not have the faintest idea, how it would work.

At least he found the opposite way: Not the EU together with the UK, but ONLY the Stormont responsible for a real hard border or not. Just as the HoC voted against, exactly the 27 EU member states will vote against, leaving two options: Hard Brexit or revoke art 50.

The ‘backstop’ was a British proposal, not one …

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/the-backstop-was-a-british-proposal-not...

18-1-2019 · The ‘backstop’ was a British proposal, not one tabled by Ireland or the EU ... Irish food exports, especially of meat, will be subject to heavy duties.

 

7) new developments of the EU is from 1 Nov onwards nothing which the UK has any voice nor vote in. Looking to the disaster we saw the last 3 years, quite some criticism is evaporated. To give you an idea: the ONLY party in the Netherlands in favour of a NEXIT lost ALL its 4 seats in the EU Parliament. 

And Mr "Selfini"... is now in the opposition. AfD: against (muslim) immigrants, but NOT against the EU. Even Madame Le Pen is quite silent about any leaving the EU.

1-2) This is not a club but a treaty-based organization, quite unwieldy at that. These comments are largely a regurgitation of Barnier et al talking points, personages mandated to negotiate on behalf of the 27.

3-4) Constructive comments, please. This smuggling story evokes Project Fear.

5-6) In the end for its own interest Ireland needs to take responsibility to work with the UK on the detail as this is too small for the EU to be bothered. It's true that Parliament chose May, and that just goes to show how they were operating in a bubble, seemingly unaware I guess of her botching record as Home Secretary.

7) Actually, the problem is between the northern tier - Germany, NL, Finland being the most demanding - vs the southern members, the ones most likely to want to leave.

The BBC show Dateline London has an excellent discussion of future scenarios for Brexit and the next election, which Iain Martin of The Times expects will bring out the realignment of Remain and Leave with voters crossing from normal affiliations. This show airs again on Sunday at 03:30, 08:30, 15:30 BKK time.

This discussion also shows the passions of two on Remain plus a neutral party from Brussels:

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2019/10/boris-johnson-brexit-proposal-eu-workable-191004195122213.html

It seems that the Irish Republic is deferring to EU as an excuse for not seriously engaging Boris et al, and EU is saying that they will not do anything to damage the open border, so in effect deferring to Irish government. Catch-22!!! 

Meanwhile EU bureaucrats are making such a fuss about their standards, how there will have to be border checks if there is no backstop. Yet if Northern Ireland keeps to the same EU product standards, then after Brexit it should only be a question of goods going out of Britain to mainland EU or Northern Ireland needing customs treatment. It's not necessarily the same situation as with people, so I can understand the UK offer being rational, to maintain UK national unity.

So when people get off a boat or plane upon arriving on the island of Eire, there could be a door/lane for EU citizens just going to the Republic, while the other door/lane could be for foreign nationals or EU people wanting to also visit Northern Ireland and the UK. They could receive some sort of passport stamp and perhaps a QR code card or image on phone to pass or respond to any checking, especially if they go on to UK (over the water). If a flight is arriving from a non-EU country, immigration has checks, anyway.

For repetitive trade within the island, online pre-registration should be feasible. The technology already exists for checking vehicle registration plates, so cross-border shipments could be accounted without inspection stops.

Ireland should have requested a mandate from the EU to handle the negotiations for its border on its own since this could just be an elaboration of existing arrangements. But of course that would not accord with obstructionist agendas.

It should be obvious that the backstop would never end and that May's deal is a Catch-22 - endless blackmail by the 27 remainer countries. No wonder it was rejected 3 times by Parliament. The current impasse exposes, gives a preview of the dilatory game that would await the UK should it fall into the May trap. So it's better to confront this stonewalling now than to endure years of fruitless grandstanding by EU grandees.

Though we must remember that it's never over - up next - the trade negotiations!!! How many years will that go on? 27 with vetoes vs 1. Without serious reform, the EU may disassemble beforehand.

29 minutes ago, jany123 said:

What a croc!

 

i got my start in life thru my parents contacts, as do a whole lot of people... for example, the trump got started with his dad’s dosh, which kept coming, despite multiple bankruptcies. Imagine the string pulling to keep a multiple bankrupt in work!

 

meanwhile, regards the salary in question... the only way for this to be relevant is if his salary is compared to that of other board members at the time. 

 

Witch hunt! Hoax! Fake news! ????????????

Yes, I'm waiting for someone to check whether the reported $50,000 per month is in line with what others were/are paid in Ukraine. Getting hired by a foreign possibly state company in a corrupt country while one's father is a national leader in a democracy is tendentious. Smacks of influence peddling.

Is there a moderate core with a potential leadership in Likud that can annul the link with religious parties and definitively dump Netanyahu? Could Likud continue with a minimum of defections? Something has to give in Likud for Lieberman's party to join in a unity government. Could such a government get serious about a two-state solution? It's the ultimate question.

After May became Home Secretary she suddenly put out an edict requiring quite high level English for people (maybe meaning Pakistanis) to get a visa to study English in the UK. As a result of this Catch-22 many language schools were undermined. I don't know what happened after that, since I gave up the idea of helping a Tibetan exit Tibet (temporarily) this way.

This is a good assessment of May's record as Home Secretary:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/18/what-does-theresa-mays-record-as-home-secretary-tell-us

Regarding education immigration, scroll down to

Boris is proposing adding 20000 policemen. May reduced policing by 30000:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/07/05/theresa-may-disastrous-home-secretary-prime-minister-policing/

When the Referendum decided "leave", I was appalled  by the idea of May as PM, realizing that it would be a monumental nightmare dictated by Madame Catch-22, i.e. May!!!

If Boris had been PM back then, perhaps the EU and Ireland would have been unable to pass responsibility back and forth in order to prevent a solution to the Irish border, since there would have been adequate time to work out a solution. Instead we had a dilatory minuet between May and her remainer cohort on the one hand and, on the other, EU actors determined to sabotage the outcome for the first defector from the U.S.E. project [U.S.E. = United States of Europe] 

If needed I will further explain the bad faith game that Ireland and EU played in order to entangle the UK in this horror which the EU may one day fairly soon sorely regret.

The comment by JAG (#7) seems well reasoned.

I think that the PM has a duty to the people to see Brexit through. I find that the strategy adopted by his opponents, i.e. drafting a law to command the PM to do a specific action in a unique situation, to be a circuitous, if not cynical, avoidance of procedure.

Meanwhile, the PM may have further options not discussed here yet, namely to thwart the Royal Assent by either the Government refusing to present the bill or by the PM advising the Queen not to sign the bill. (This is discussed in an article entitled "Brexit Spat Tests Tacit Dictum: Never Put the Queen on the Spot" in Saturday's Wall Street Journal). While this has apparently not happened since 1708, we are living in tumultuous times.

The suggestion that the PM resign, if he cannot or will not execute such a command of Parliament, seems more like an act that a minister or bureaucrat would do in the face of a policy of the PM or the Government.

Rather, if the PM somehow goes against the will of Parliament, the Tories could through the 1922 Committee replace the PM or the Parliament could take a no-confidence vote.

1 hour ago, NCC1701A said:

i can remember JFK also. I was 8 years old.

I was watching on TV when it happened. A great irony is that Kennedy would have been president, not Noxin. Besides the China problem created by Kissinger/Nixon, the whole transformation of the Republican Party began with the Southern Strategy to bring what we see today, not to mention the rise of Trump. So the action by Sirhan, a Palestinian, finally means that chances for Palestinians to have a state are as a result practically dead!

1 hour ago, newnative said:

     Just ridiculous.  If they wanted the buildings preserved it was up to the Thai government to protect them from development.  Don't go crying to Britain now that it's too late.  Hopefully, this has taught you a hard lesson and you'll look around at what else should be preserved and protect it--but likely not.  This will probably just be repeated--wringing of hands after something is demolished.  And, yes, there are ways of developing a historic site while preserving important buildings, working around them, and repurposing them. 

In Chiang Mai the former British Consulate building was retained in the design of a modern hotel (now called Anantara)

https://www.anantara.com/en/chiang-mai This old building adds a lot - is used for restaurant & bar.

Perhaps the Bangkok residence was too big or poorly sited to be fit for a new use.

23 minutes ago, Handsome Gardener said:

I think I've asked a couple of times now so lets have another go - if Brexit was a well costed, economically viable idea that would thrust the UK into better times, why isn't the pound going up ?

The worst thing is uncertainty, certainly enough to depress the Pound. The backstop was a recipe for unending uncertainty.

I'm annoyed that May had three years during which her Brexit men could have worked out a solution for the border with the Irish Republic. Then there would have been no need for the backstop.

39 minutes ago, mikebike said:

I don't think they would be in today's predicament if the British govt didn't try to hang on to a lucrative part of the decayed empire about 40yrs too long. Shoulda let it go post WWII with Singapore et al.

The problem is/was that most of the territory was on lease from the Emperor of China. Now that there's a new emperor in town, it's difficult to conceive of democracy straddling any part of China. Taiwan people are watching in apprehension, no doubt.