nigelforbes

You answered your own point, the DPA protection was very high initially, because banks wanted to attract deposits, that job done the level of protection has been reduced to a more normal level. Today, less than 1.5% of all consumer bank accounts contain more than THB 1 mill, the current level of DPA insurance so why set the level any higher? https://www.bot.or.th/App/BTWS_STAT/statistics/BOTWEBSTAT.aspx?reportID=188&language=ENG Thai banks are a much safer bet than their western counterparts, their balance sheets are much stronger, they have implemented Basel III liquidity rules and they don't engage in foreign currency lending the same way that western banks do. Somebody will be along shortly to point out that Thailand Consumer lending is higher than many other countries and if consumers begin to default on the 56% of loans that are unsecured, the banks will have problems. Chartchai covered this subject in his column this week (disappointingly), if 20% of consumer debt defaulted, banks would have to begin to raise capital. 20% is a HUGE amount, the current NPL rate is under 3% and special watch loans under 6%. Even in an extreme case scenario of 20%, BOT is well capitalized with one of the highest FCY Reserve levels of any similar sized economy. By all means withdraw your money and put it in a safe deposit box back home but that will mean its value will be eroded by inflation plus you will pay exchange rate costs and loose out on any currency appreciation. Personally, my money is flowing West to East, not the other way around.

Just to put the, "collapsing Dollar" into perspective, see below the DI for the past three years, USD is now heading back to 100% of full value for the first time in quite some time: https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/dxy

It's not difficult to find the ingredients to make decent or good quality Cumberland sausages or English bangers, all the ingredients are easily found with a little bit of effort. My wife makes batches of Cumberlands that I think are as good as any back home.

Thanks. The reason I asked is because I am taking Circadin 2mg which is prolonged release melatonin and the guidance is to use for short period only. https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/product/2809/pil

It's certainly what I did.

Goodbye!

Is this safe for over age 65 years to use for extended periods?

We were talking about pictures of man and wife, inside/outside the house, for a marriage visa, not 90 day reports.

You would need to ask a broker, whilst I don't know the details I am certain they exist. The central bank buys futures domestically in order to hedge USD, regularly. UOBAM or kasikorn securities may be able to advise, I'll also ask a couple of questions and will revert

Agreed, the reason for wanting to consider this action isn't valid in my book, personally I would take the risk and do nothing.....but that's me.

The OP needs to enter the options and futures market, see a broker and buy an option to buy X THB at whatever rate gives you the 25k USD. If you don't make the strike price, walk away from the deal whereas buying a future will commit you to complete the transaction.

Between scanning for underage workers and tourists with expired visa's, the BiB must be rushed off their feet, my heart goes out to them. If there were no tourists, we wouldn't have these problems in the first place. :))

I very much doubt that in practice, Immi officers will start demanding to see passports of foreigners on the street or in bars etc. Perhaps if they have cause to suspect that somebody is up to mischief or if they have other information about them that's fine but otherwise it will create such negative press that it wouldn't be worthwhile. What percentage of people carry their passports would you guess? And what percentage of people have irregularities with their visa would you guess? My guess is that for every 100 people checked, they may find one person, or thereabouts.

Well bully for you, Sisaket Immi., the new model for Thai Immi, nationally, it really is Kansas after all. But I'm not sure the smile you saw on their faces was a welcome, it's more probable it was the, "hmm, 10 year LTR, farang have money, make mental note for later".

Yes, it's pretty ironic is it not. Of all the hundreds of things they could do to deter crime, they pick the highest profile, least useful, most interesting one.....come on lads, let's go do some bullying and throwing our weight around on Walking Street, let everyone know we're doing our job, we might even make a few baht in the process.

I've never been asked for mine where producing my Thai DL didn't suffice.

Hypothetically, it might be, we're doing a lot of futuristic surmising here. I recall in the 1970's I was hold Deutschmarks in my bank account, one day the bank wrote to me and said, we've converted your DM's to Euro's....so why not.

Checking the papers of foreigners who are working, fine. But walking into bars and up to foreigners and demanding to see their visa, that's so OTT as to be seriously unfunny. That's something I'd expect from a police state but here it's a competency issue.

Sure, I merely extrapolated what I thought would be the ultimate scenario in the minds of many people. The issue for me in all of this is relative pricing, how/who/where is the value or worth of one Thai digital coin, compared to the value or worth of another country's coin? Right now, that relative worth or value is established directly or indirectly via USD and the FOREX, what will replace that? One person in Thailand says I'll buy a US widget from America that costs one USD digital coin, except the Thai buyer is only holding Thai digital coins, which have a different value. National digital currencies are not an issue, that's a straight replacement for paper money.....go for it. But the exchange rate/value issue is a biggee and I don't see anyone talking about that.

It's one thing for individual countries/Central Banks to issue digital currencies that replace their own currency, but it's something else entirely to have a single global digital currency. Individual digital currencies would be valued on the economy of that country, much in the same way that individual currencies are at present, instead of the FOREX we might have something like the DIGIEX. Currently, USD sits at the top of the FOREX, all other currencies are valued or calculated based on USD. But how would DIGIEX work, what would sit at the top of the DIGIEX tree? Again, currently, the value of USD is measured using the value of six other currencies, YEN, EURO, Pound, CAD. Swedish Krona and Swiss Franc. If we were to replace USD with that basket of economies (not basket of currencies) and add others to it such as YUAN, that could be the unit of measure against which DIGIEX uses to calculate the value of individual digital currencies. So one THAI-DIGIEX might be worth 0.40 UK-DIGIEX for example, and so on. But really, all that's happened in that scenario is that digital money has replaced paper money,, using the same system, except reliance on USD has been eliminated. Tryin to equalize all of those individual DIGIEX's so that one THAI DIGIEX equals 1 UK-DIGIEX is impossible because the relative value of the respective economies is different, that's why a global BITCOIN wont work. Mostly it wont work because it's not based on anything, apart from air and trendy demand.

Anyone can say whatever they want and then get it quoted in print, it doesn't mean it's true or mean anything at all. It's nonsense, read the article, it says absolutely nothing.

A few points: 57.2% of household debt or Consumer Loans is not collateralized or secured on real assets, not 80%. Consumer Loans is private lending and does not form a part of GDP. Consumer Consumption IS part of GDP which is buoyed by International Tourism and present, that's the real benefit of tourism to the economy. Fitch reported positively on the Thai economy in December (below) and two days ago revised down/agreed with BOT their GDP growth forecast....that was all they did! Fitch didn't raise doubts over Thailand's credit rating nor their prospect for growth, see the Bangkok Post article dated 4 April containing Fitch in the headline. https://www.fitchratings.com/research/sovereigns/thailand-28-12-2022 Lastly, Public borrowing remains under 60% of GDP, that is one of the lowest of any developing or mature economies.

Agreed, yes and yes!

International tourism is an export, which is an invisible export, compared to the export of goods which is described as a Customs export. Infrastructure build out of Belt and Road initiatives was mostly financed domestically, the Asian Development Bank provided additional finances which involved currency swaps. The high speed rail project did not involve overseas financing, CP Group was the consortium lead.

That, and spending money here that comes from overseas and the holiday experience is then exported when the tourist returns home.