John Drake

Farang fatigue.

Question: why does the rising price of gold increase the value of the baht and how does Thailand export so much gold, when there is almost no gold mined in Thailand? I would think Thailand would import much more gold than it buys.

Did Grok write this?

Replay of Trump's first administration. Tax cut for billionaires, piling up record debt, and destroying the value of the dollar. "If you seek his monument, look around you."

Like the $100K Chinese made watches he sold the license to use his name on. Sleaze just oozes out of everything this slug does.

Big Beautiful Bill. Why does everything Trump creates sound gauche, vulgar, and childish?

Tallest midget.

Guess this explains the uptick in European tourists that TAT was bragging about yesterday.

Absolutely true.

How did a topic supposedly about European tourism to Thailand turn into yet another argument between potheads and boozers?

Might have something to do with the "old Allies" snuggling up to China as fast as they can.

Maybe not. It seems their predecessors didn't.

Why was it going backwards?

World War II commemorations are like a religion to many Europeans, especially the British. Frankly, it seems unhealthy to me, trying to compensate for present day inadequacy through constantly sanctifying events that occurred 80 to 86 years ago.

This is just a continuation of the stock market manipulation Trump engaged in during his first term. Remember when he first threatened tariffs against China then? The markets would drop and then there would be an announcement of "progress" and the markets would bounce back and soar. He did this over and over and over and over again, ramping up the stock market over time. BTW, Trump back then kept most of his investments in a "blind trust" which consisted almost entirely of S&P ETFs. So he only had to keep an eye out on one thing: pushing up the S&P. This gauche, narcissistic glutton is only going to take actions that enrich him and his family.

I live in Thailand. The most important factor for me is a strong dollar. And Trump is destroying the US dollar. Biden's policy of a strong dollar made me tangibly wealthier, while Trump is degrading my standard of living.

Island of strangers.

We're going to need it! Need to get a reading on the water level in the dams, too.

He's just a narcissistic agent of chaos who wants two things: 1) to be the center of attention every day and 2) to manipulate the government to increase his own wealth through a variety of shady deals and stock manipulation.

As inept as Thai officials can be, I expect to see Trump's even more incompetent negotiators get rolled by them.

I think we're going to need this topic this year. Maybe they should already be letting dam water out.

It would destroy the lives of thousands if not millions of Thais. Horrible for the country, although I do remember of going to Chaengwattan for my retirement extension and enjoying only having two three people sitting in the waiting area.

So the goal of the tariffs wasn't really about reshoring American jobs and isolating your Chinese enemy or stop paying them to build weapons to use against the US? It was all about stock market manipulation.

Maybe two years ago. I used to stop in and say hello to some old colleagues at MUIC whenever I would go to the Mahidol branch of Bangkok Bank. It was still the closest branch to me. But they closed it, and I haven't gone back to MU.

"Tax credits" seem to work oddly in IRS terminology. The Earned Income Tax Credit, for example, is not a credit against taxes you pay but actually a cash amount the government flat out gives you. Maybe that is the way they will do it, here. File return, claim US citizen remittance tax credit, and have the IRS issue it to your bank account.