CaptHaddock

Office 2016 is free until the end of the year.

The preview of Office 2016 is free until the end of the year at which point you will have to buy the release version.

I can log in to my Vanguard account using the vpn without a problem. My advice to the OP is: unless Vanguard actually closes out your account, which is a possibility, you should keep the Vanguard account and get a vpn. The reason is that if you close the account, you will never be able to open it again as an expat. It's probably a good idea to open an account with Schwab as well. The important thing to have as many accounts as possible since you never know who will change his policy in the future and lock you out.

Actually, I am encouraged to hear that VG is using ip addresses as the basis for restricting access since we can easily work around that. If they were to compel us to demonstrate US residency with a utility bill or something we would all be SOL. Of course, it may yet come to that point.

since january 2008 CNY appreciated vs. THB ~19.5% and now some resident as well as non-resident eggsburts are wetting their pants and shout "Armageddon!" because there was a small reversal of 3%... gimme a break

The devaluation is just a symptom, Naam - the canary in the coal mine. It's not really about the currency but about the massive liquidity crisis in China. China has been trying to prop up its stock market, real estate market, failing banks and shadow banking services due to bad loans all while suffering an 8% decrease in exports.

All indicators in China are negative. China is trying to stimulate. China is experiencing the first real slowdown in investment, job creation and exports in decades. It became accustomed to charts that always went up and it really doesn't know what to do right now.

The eggsburts I see are those who have been trumpeting for years that China is The Next Big Deal^TM while having no idea how dependent China is on investment from the West.

Cheers.

no objection to any of these claims Your Honour. but changing the exchange rate band will not affect any of the stated facts.

the only result i can see is that Chinese exporters will receive an additional small amount of domestic currency when they change their forex earned abroad.

An additional 4% of the gross foreign sales, all of which goes straight to the bottom line, resulting from rate changes in 3 days hardly seems like a small amount, especially in view of the low profit margins of Chinese manufacturing.

Completely ridiculous. You have made up your own, personal concept of liability and persuaded yourself that that is how the law works. Good luck with that approach to the world.

The fact that she hit his car means that she failed to exercise due caution whether or not she was speeding, whether or not she was drunk, whether or not he was parked legally. The difference between her hitting him and him hitting her seems to be lost on you.

First of all, who´s fault was the accident?? What did the policeman do along the roadside? Were was his car standing exactly, on the road or beside the road. Maybe it is not her fault at all?

None of that matters. Even if the cop had parked himself in the middle of the road, the fact that she hit him means that she was driving too fast for the road conditions at the time. A parked car can never be the cause of a collision. Use your head.

Unless he is in a place marked as "no parking".

The fact that she is trying to settle suggests he was parked legally

Neither of these ridiculous statements is true. A "No Parking" sign means only that you are liable for a fine if you park there. It does not mean anyone can kill you with impunity. It does not mean if a careless driver collides with you, it is therefore your fault.

Whether he was parked legally or not has no bearing on the negotiations which concern the value of the life of the man she killed and her ability to pay. Negotiations in such a case are normal both in Thailand and the West, although they are conducted more discretely in the West.

If his car had broken down in the middle of the highway and she came along and hit him she would still be completely at fault because the driver has the obligation to drive in a way that is safe according to the conditions at the time. Obviously, she failed to do that.

First of all, who´s fault was the accident?? What did the policeman do along the roadside? Were was his car standing exactly, on the road or beside the road. Maybe it is not her fault at all?

None of that matters. Even if the cop had parked himself in the middle of the road, the fact that she hit him means that she was driving too fast for the road conditions at the time. A parked car can never be the cause of a collision. Use your head.

Let's not forget that the Negotiator will want his 25% but Court proceeding could push this a lot higher. From a Foreigner's perspective this method of litigation between the Parities by the Police seems quite alien in a case of death.

From anyone with a moral compass the whole thing is wrong. Victim and perpetrator putting a value on a human life.....

So life insurance is similarly lacking in human decency?

In a world of slow economies exporting nations engage in competitive devaluation. Japan last year. Lately China. The same thing happend in the Great Depression. Asian currencies will continue to decline as long as the weakness of the importing economies continues. Makes me wonder if the Germans are screwing Greece as a way to devalue the Euro from which they benefit greatly.

The depth of the ignorance on display on TV is always impressive, but especially in this thread.

1. The Reese woman is at at fault. She crashed her car into a parked car. Period. A car parked legally at the side of the road did not cause the car driven by the woman to hit it. Yes, the crash was an accident, which is to say no more than that she did not intend to crash into the parked car, but her responsibility does not depend solely on her intentions, but also on such factors as whether she was exercising due caution in driving her car on that occasion, to which the answer is clearly "no." Virtually all car crashes are accidents, but someone is always responsible legally.

2. She almost certainly broke the law even if she was sober and may yet be prosecuted for it, but the negotiations with the family do not concern criminal liability, but only liability for the damages she caused to the dead cop and his family. Civil and criminal liabilities are distinct. That said, it might be that the cops at the negotiations or the surviving family members may use the threat of criminal prosecution to pressure the driver into reaching agreement with the family.

3. Whether or not she broke the law, she did cause a material loss to the family of the cop. The principal of monetary compensation for the loss of life is well-established in Anglo-Saxon law and, I believe, at least as well-established in Thai law. The life of the person who was wrongfully killed has a value in baht which depends on how much he was earning, his prospects for futures earnings, and other economic considerations. The value of the life of a street bum is not the same as the value of the life of a successful surgeon. Every one knows that the real value of a human life cannot be converted into currency, but it is widely accepted that failure to compensate the victim or his survivors would be even more egregiously offend common sense.

4. The value of the cop's life that was lost does not depend on the net worth of the driver who killed him. However, the likelihood of recovering compensation for the amount of the loss does very much depend on the wealth of the person responsible. The notion that the woman responsible in this case should somehow be immune from making restitution for the harm she has caused because a poor person similarly culpable would be unable to compensate the victim's family, beggars belief. If no one ever had more responsibility that the least capable person in society there would be no liability ever. This fact of life is widely recognized in Anglo-Saxon law. Your unlikely to get a lawyer even to take your case if the other party is without assets.

5. Insurance companies agree to assume your liability under specified conditions, but always up to a certain maximum limit. That fact does not mean that the person who caused the loss is exempt from the actual, real losses of the victims beyond what the insurance company will assume. If that were the case, no insurance policy would every pay more than one dollar.

6. Reese may walk out on a negotiating session, but she knows that she cannot refuse to negotiate and that, in the end, she will have to pay an amount that the other side considers acceptable. Public opinion in Thailand strongly supports such an expectation. If she were to walk away from her responsibility the cop's family would have recourse to a civil suit for damages. She might be able to prevail in court, but that is far from certain.

The only aspect of this case that is particular to Thailand is the public nature of the bargaining that is going on over the amount of compensation from the guilty party. It may strike us unseemly, but such negotations are the norm even in the West although it is not likely to be so visible. In the US only the lawyers would be talking and they would be unlikely to talk to the press.

This thread presents a cornucopia of ways to fail to understand the obvious.

As she has,nt been convicted of any crime i,m confused why she has to pay anything, thats what insurance is for?

You lack a basic grasp of legal liability. Suppose I run you over causing severe bodily injury which requires USD 300,000 to treat. (You may have other losses such as loss of income, damage to your property, or pain and suffering, but we'll ignore those to keep the example simple.) Now, previously you had forseen the possiblity of injuring another person and so you bought liability insurance which will pay any victim or a single, negligent action of yours no more than USD 100,000. The insurance company promptly pays your accident viction the USD 100,000. Now the victim is still out of pocket another USD 200,000. What is he to do? In the US he promptly sues you and anyone else who might possibly be held responsible to any degree. When you bought the insurance policy all you bought was the willingness of the insurance company to pay out no more than the USD 100,000. You did not buy any right not to be held responsible for any injuries you caused beyond what the policy provides. There is no such right. You are responsible for your actions.

In the US your victim would hire a lawyer to get at least the remaining USD 200,000 out of you. There might be some negotiation and an out-of-court settlement is possible, but it's likely that you will not agree to pay anything near the USD 200k so the victim sues you in court. If he wins damages that you will be required to pay may be anything from a token indication of blame of a few dollars to a sum that, including penalties, might be far more than the original USD 200,000. Your liability is whatever a jury says it is.

Thai people resort to lawsuits much less frequently. Instead there is an informal system of negotiation for compensation which frequently involves the police as a kind of third party. The police do not adjudicate. Instead the whole process is geared toward finding a solution that is acceptable to all parties rather than a decision that is "fair" in the abstract. There are advantages and disadvantages to such a system. But at least there is a system that is accessible to everyone and seems to produce acceptable results frequently enough.

So your saying she was under insured?

If the woman involved in the accident earned below 10k per month and had zero in her bank account would they still be negotiating at the police station?

Yes, she under-insured herself.

If the reckless driver had no money, it is true that there would probably be less negotiation although the guilty party might conceivably have to pay out over time. The same would be true in the US where only a fool would sue a person with no assets. Do you think this Reese person should not be financially liable for the death she recklessly caused because a poor person could not be forced to pay?

As she has,nt been convicted of any crime i,m confused why she has to pay anything, thats what insurance is for?

You lack a basic grasp of legal liability. Suppose I run you over causing severe bodily injury which requires USD 300,000 to treat. (You may have other losses such as loss of income, damage to your property, or pain and suffering, but we'll ignore those to keep the example simple.) Now, previously you had forseen the possiblity of injuring another person and so you bought liability insurance which will pay any victim or a single, negligent action of yours no more than USD 100,000. The insurance company promptly pays your accident viction the USD 100,000. Now the victim is still out of pocket another USD 200,000. What is he to do? In the US he promptly sues you and anyone else who might possibly be held responsible to any degree. When you bought the insurance policy all you bought was the willingness of the insurance company to pay out no more than the USD 100,000. You did not buy any right not to be held responsible for any injuries you caused beyond what the policy provides. There is no such right. You are responsible for your actions.

In the US your victim would hire a lawyer to get at least the remaining USD 200,000 out of you. There might be some negotiation and an out-of-court settlement is possible, but it's likely that you will not agree to pay anything near the USD 200k so the victim sues you in court. If he wins damages that you will be required to pay may be anything from a token indication of blame of a few dollars to a sum that, including penalties, might be far more than the original USD 200,000. Your liability is whatever a jury says it is.

Thai people resort to lawsuits much less frequently. Instead there is an informal system of negotiation for compensation which frequently involves the police as a kind of third party. The police do not adjudicate. Instead the whole process is geared toward finding a solution that is acceptable to all parties rather than a decision that is "fair" in the abstract. There are advantages and disadvantages to such a system. But at least there is a system that is accessible to everyone and seems to produce acceptable results frequently enough.

It's also possible to set your BB account up to send an SMS automatically to your Thai phone everytime your account receives a transfer from abroad. That SMS show the details of the amount received in dollars, the Thai baht amount credited, and the conversion rate. You have to enable this service via phone call. It can't be enabled online. If you have enabled the SMS before your initial, identifying deposits from abroad, you will have all the info you need for your US bank and won't need to call BB.

Thais have such low expectations for the ability of foreigners to speak Thai, that frankly their compliments on our pronunciation don't mean a lot, unlike say, the French. As far as I can tell, if you manage to get any tone correct at all they'll say you พูดชัด. The only way to learn correct pronunciation is to have a qualified Thai teacher correct you as you make errors. There are few qualified Thai teachers. If you want to learn to speak correctly it is essential that you find such a teacher and have one-on-one instruction. Ordinary Thais won't try to correct you anymore that ordinary Americans will correct foreign speakers of English. In fact, one way to evaluate a possible Thai teacher is to note how often and consistently she corrects your errors in speech.

The main issue is the the tones, of course, but there are others: unaspirated consonants, long vowels, rhythm of speech, etc. As English speakers when we attempt to use discourse-level intonation changes, e.g. rising tone at the end of a sentence to indicate a question, it tends to render our Thai tones incomprehensible to the Thai listener. The Thai language has other means to express questions, emphasis, irony, etc. Learning these is a challenge.

Used books are cheaper at abebooks.com

This discussion is an example of the pitfalls of reasoning from anecdote instead of data.

Or watching too much Fox News.

I return to the U.S. frequently, was just back July 1 - 8, everything seems fine, didn't see any anarchy, except in Chicago. http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/06/us/chicago-violent-weekend/index.html

According to Grover Norquist, crime is down because more people carry guns. Who needs police? Prisons?

Grover Norquist: Concealed Carry Gun Laws Decrease Crime

By Bill Hoffmann | Thursday, 12 Feb 2015 05:43 PM

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, says concealed carry gun laws are responsible for the nation's declining crime rate, not more incarceration of criminals.

"The mass incarcerations have had less of an impact. It certainly helped in the 80s and in the beginning of the 90s. We're seeing it have less impact [now]," Norquist said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

Of course, right-winger Norquist would say that. It's a ludicrous claim. Gun crimes, like all crimes, are crimes of opportunity. The more guns there are, the more opportunities for gun crimes.

Here's another graph that shows assault deaths over time in the US, which has the highest gun ownership in the world, compared to other countries.

And here's a graph by state that shows that states with more restrictive gun laws have less gun violence:

Of course, gun fans don't care about any of this. They just love guns.

Nice of you to speak for gun owners.

Do you have ESP?

Or are you just being a bit arrogant, to put it kindly?

My regret is that my statement is not arrogant enough. I despise gun owners who put their fantasies of power above the safety of everyone else, including school children.

The Nation should have supported democracy when Suthep's mob was illegally stopping the 2014 election instead of supporting him.

Title has been edited to better reflect the actual content of the article.

The article is specific to drug costs in the US, which are the highest in the world--- even European versions of same patented drug cost less. In Thailand, the Compulsory Licensing law gives the government the option of producing local brands of even patented drugs. In some cases it does so. In other cases, e.g. imatinib, it has used the threat of doing so to successfully leverage negotiations with maufacturers.

And the goal of the Trans Pacific Partnership currently being pushed by the US govt is to protect "intellectual property" further very much including drug patents.

The secretive TPP deal involves 12 countries and nearly 40 percent of the global economy. On Wednesday, WikiLeaks released a leaked draft of another chapter of the secret negotiating text, this time the TPP’s so-called Healthcare Annex. Newly revealed details of the draft show the TPP would give major pharmaceutical companies more power over public access to medicine and weaken public healthcare programs. The leaked draft also suggests the TPP would prevent Congress from passing reforms to lower drug costs. One of the practices that would be allowed is known as "evergreening." It lets drug companies extend the life of a patent by slightly modifying their product and then getting a new patent.

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/6/11/backlash_against_tpp_grows_as_leaked

The intent is to bring more stringent drug patent enforcement to Thailand and the other countries of the TPP.

When my Thai friends ask if America has corruption I explain that the cop who stops you for speeding probably does not want a bribe, but the doctors as a whole are on the take from the corrupt pharmaceutical companies.

No, not "doctors as a whole". Some doctors, yes, in varying ways and degrees. But not even most let alone all.

Well-known individual doctors, like the famous child psychiatrist at Harvard who promoted drugs for "hyperactivity" without disclosing his payments from the manufacturer, are indeed corrupted directly. Other go on junkets paid for by drug companies. But virtually all of them get their information on drugs only from the drug companies, which is a form of systemic corruption.

The drug companies are corrupt because they have corrupted the patent system, which is the granting of monopolies as an incentive to develop products that would not otherwise be developed, into unproductive rent-seeking on a vast scale. They further suborn malfeasance on the part of the doctors by funding research that is so biased to their economic interests as to be essentially crooked. They have turned the FDA into the shining American example of regulatory capture on a par with the SEC. Certainly, the drug companies are motivated by profit, but then so is the mafia. In neither case is their effect on society necessarily justified by the transparency of their motivation.

It's indicative of a larger issue. When it comes to private companies I prefer they not be run by Thais.

And you think Thailand is a good place to look because?

When my Thai friends ask if America has corruption I explain that the cop who stops you for speeding probably does not want a bribe, but the doctors as a whole are on the take from the corrupt pharmaceutical companies.

It's ok. The Irish didn't gain independence on the first go round either.

THE DOLLAR IS DYING, and the only people that don't want to accept this are the Americans and thier Government, many of the traditional trades that were in dollars ,(be it oil or other commodities) have switched to their own or the sellers currencies. Nixon decided to take the dollar out of the restrictions that gold placed on his ability to wage war in Viet Nam. And it was decided at the time ,that the new world currency would be the dollar. (Bretton Wood Agreement)

There are several problems with that ,no 1 being the Federal Reserve which has share holders and is a Private Entity, seperate from the rest of the financial institutions, and the merry go round between the Fed ,Treasury and the Banks is a total Con trick, because they can print millions of bits of worthless paper (dollars) without anything to back it up. The Gov . issues a bond , the big Banks bid for the bond , they take the bond to the Fed , and the Fed writes a cheque for that amount with a cheque book account that has no money in it ,zero zilch, A criminal offence for you or me. , Then -Hey Presto -Abbra codabbra -- Money miraculously rolls off the banks printing presses .

This is not just the dollar , the World has followed , And they are heading up a g©reek with no paddle !!!

First you need to know that there hasn't been enough gold mined in the history of the world to back the USD, much less other currencies. The world's population has grown to divide up what is there even more. Economies must grow but the ready supply of gold won't.

The second thing is that gold is just another symbol - it is of value only because people perceive it is. You can't eat it if you're hungry or heat your living space if you're cold. You first would have to convert that gold into something you could eat to find a trade when people are hungry. Food would be the new gold.

The US Fed does not and never has printed money. That's the domain of the US government - the Department of The Treasury. End of.

Your misconceptions about what happens are stunning. The only way the US can get more money to fund deficits or debt is to sell treasuries on the open market. That's the law. Now, the UK and the Eurozone CAN and DO issue bonds which they buy themselves which is a different and potentially deadly sleight of hand.

This is not correct. While the Treasury operates the Mint that prints actual paper currency, most dollars are not held as paper currency, but as book entries in accounts at banks and other financial institutions. The Fed creates money in the broader sense by providing credit to member banks which is indeed created out of thin air, although backed by the US govt. Contrary to what Andy8017 thinks, there is nothing degenerate about that. The currency is not being debased. It is not a con trick, although it does depend on faith and credit, which can be lost. The Treasury borrows to finance the spending authorized by Congress, but the Fed decides whether those obligations will be held as Treasury bonds or US currency by deciding whether to create credit to buy the bonds or not. Currency and bonds are essentially similar financial obligations. So, to provide liquidity to banks as the lender of last resport during the 2008 financial crisis the Fed expanded its balance sheet by creating a a trillion dollars of credit out of nothing and using it to buy up first Treasury bonds and then, for the first time, mortgage-backed bonds from the banks enabling them to meet their various payment obligations and thereby avoiding a collapse of the banking system. So, Ben Bernanke was correct when he said that the govt has a way to avoid deflation by using the Fed's "printing press" of credit creation to "print" money.

Creating credit out of thin air is not mysterious and it doesn't take a central bank to do it. You and I can do it. If I sell you my car and accept a note from you promising to make monthly payments for the next two years, I have created credit out of thin air also. I could then sell the note for a discounted cash amount to some investor and now I fully liquid from the credit which I created. There is nothing necessarily degenerate about that process, although it does entail the risk of default. Govts have abused their ability to print money in the past, but not the US govt, not this time.

I use both Skype and Viber Out to call Thai landlines and cell/mobiles, without any issues. I do find the overall call quality much better with Viber Out, compared to Skype.

That's interesting. Skype quality has deteriorated badly lately, but I have put off trying alternatives, because skype is still so widely used. How is the quality of viber out on computer-to-computer calls? And the video quality? Do you call the US? If so, how is the quality from here to there?

Explain to me the advantage of volunteering as a pseudo-cop? Because otherwise there isn't sufficient opportunity to mingle with the criminal element?