spidermike007

Very little chance of the dollar regaining it's status. Trump has taken a wrecking ball to US prestige and few want to have anything to do with the US anymore. Stability is required and he is highly unstable, unhinged, a mad hatter, and has very little in the way of smarts and understanding of globalization. He is truly a village idiot, but a genius at promoting himself as something other than what is truly is. American influence is in the rear view now. Trumps damage is permanent. The goon is taking a wrecking ball to the pillars of American power and innovation. His tariffs are endangering U.S. companies’ access to global markets and supply chains. He is slashing public research funding and gutting our universities, pushing talented researchers to consider leaving for other countries. He wants to roll back programs for technologies like clean energy and semiconductor manufacturing and is wiping out American soft power in large swaths of the globe. What will emerge to replace the lowly dollar? The euro? Gold? Bitcoin? Asian currencies? I would consider the Thai baht safe right now. Alot of issues with the economy here, but nothing like what the US faces.

Good post, thanks. It 9s fascinating to see what is happening in the West. I was recently in the US. Both Southern California and Oregon. Many shops are closing, consumer confidence is way, way down, inflation continues to rage, and most people are having a hard time, and the quality of life continues to drop for the majority, who do not own a house that's free and clear. Homelessness is a huge issue and most people seemed quite joyless, without humor, and it felt as if they simply were not enjoying their lives very much. None of that is going to change, despite the silly rhetoric and insane policies. Here in Thailand it's such a refreshing contrast, even though there are economic headwinds here, and even though most people are working hard to survive, most maintain a good attitude, are upbeat and very pleasant to be around.

Many of us drive motorcycles or scooters here, and it is dangerous getting on the roads with some of these other drivers. Getting on a scooter, or a motorcycle anywhere in Thailand, much less Phuket, Phangan, Dark Tao, or Samui without a very good helmet (the best one you can afford), is like playing Russian Roulette with three or four bullets in the chamber. It is absolutely asking for problems. The degree of recklessness here is astounding. And many foreigners come here thinking "how much trouble could I get in on a little scooter, on a tropical island"? Well, the answer is alot. The amount of foreigners who are killed on the Southern islands is staggering. Most are not reported in the media. I had a friend who worked for Samui rescue for many years, and said the numbers were about 30-60 a month, on Samui, Phangan and Koh Tao. The official number is about 3 a month. Rider beware. Use as good a helmet as you can afford, and do not use these eggshells pieces of crap. They crack at the first impact, and what lies underneath them? Your skull, which is very delicate. Riding a bike here is very dangerous. If not the highest, one of the highest fatality rates in the world. And an accident here can be very costly, to your person. Just ask yourself- do I have enough problems already, without a broken skull, or smashed head, or face injury, or lost eye? I have three friends who have been in motorbike accidents on Samui within the last decade or so. One still cannot walk, or talk or function on her own, from a motorbike accident, where she hit her head on the pavement going only 20 kph. The other one has lost alot of his mental capacity after hitting his head. He insisted for years he would never wear a helmet. Now, he seems 15 years older. The third one is a close friend, who was hit by a sidecar, and nearly lost his leg. 11 operations later, he can walk, but with a limp, and the leg caused him constant problems, many years later.

The chances of getting HIV from a woman, during vaginal sex, without the use of a condom is infinitely small. There is so much medical research on this. If I were a single man, I would be much more concerned about other STD's, which are quite easy to get without a condom. In the United States, heterosexual men accounted for 7% of new HIV diagnoses and heterosexual women accounted for 15% in 2022. The vast majority of new cases occur, however, in men who have sex with other men U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fast facts: HIV in the United States. When discussing HIV risk, people often look at which "type" of sex is riskier. They compare vaginal, anal, and oral sex. They also compare receptive sex (your partner inserts their penis into you) versus insertive sex (you insert your penis into your partner). Based entirely on the numbers, receptive anal sex is considered the highest risk activity. The risk of HIV infection is over 17 times greater for receptive anal sex than it is for receptive vaginal sex.2 Based on a 2014 study, the per-act risk of HIV transmission in 10,000 exposures is: Receptive anal intercourse: 138 Insertive anal intercourse: 11 Receptive penile-vaginal intercourse: 8 Insertive penile-vaginal intercourse: 4 Oral sex (receptive or insertive): Low risk https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-the-risk-of-hiv-from-vaginal-sex-4138626

Very well put. Where did this @JaxxBKK guy come from anyway? He seems to have appeared out of nowhere, and is totally obsessed with defending Trump, no matter how lame his policy is, even when many supporters are admitting how far the goon has strayed from his original plan.

Very true. I have been telling people for two decades how over rated the US is, and they kept on fawning. No longer. Trump has been the greatest tool in history, when it comes to convincing the world, that the US is no big deal, and is becoming a lesser version of itself daily.

I think it's fairly safe to say that Trump is a pathological superfreak, and that he cares not one iota for his supporters, for Democrats (the other half), nor for Americans or the people around the world. He cares only for himself and his family, and his cronies, and it all about power and wealth. He is personally bankrupt. That's the end of the story the sooner his supporters realize that the deeper their understanding will be in regard to his nature and his character.

I think it's fairly safe for those of us that have a reasonable level of objectivity, to say that the US has been on the decline for at least 30 or 40 years, and that decline is only going to continue. Trump is precipitating that decline to a dramatic degree, whether or not he knows that ,and whether or not this is deliberate we will probably never know. Trump’s idea of power. If I can destroy, if I can defile and march on relatively unscathed and unpunished, that makes me powerful. Other people can’t get away with it, but that’s how dominant and superior I am. Trump would not be where he is without the deep state or a similarly sinister organization or group of very powerful people who put him in that place, and are allowing him to conduct these extremely destructive economic policies. As reckless and as poorly thought out as all this seems, I think it's actually deliberate economic sabotage.

Yeah I always look at those loans as a gift, when you consider them a loan, and expect them to be paid back then there's all kinds of bad feelings, but if it's just a gift then it's like okay here, let me help you out.

Okay so you admit to your lack of expertise when it comes to wine. I happen to be a wine collector and I know for a fact that Americans would care very deeply if imported wines were heavily taxed. Though California does produce some amazing wines they're completely unlike their old world counterparts and taxing those wines is based on pure hubris. Trump appears to be exhibiting a Thai gov't. level of ignorance when it comes to these tariffs.

Debt is one of Trump's favorite things in the entire world, he has built an empire on dead and he has become an expert at erasing that debt through bankruptcy, grifting and fraud. But he is just too simple minded to understand that that would not apply to federal debt, however since he doesn't care one iota about America's future after he's gone it means nothing to him. He is the polar opposite of a patriot. One could even go so far as to call him a traitor, when you take into account the extent to which he has betrayed American values.

Correct. I don’t think he has a coherent value structure as most of us understand it. I think we’re seeing a president who’s operating without anything any of us would recognize as a conscience. Truly. It is about showing what he can get away with. It’s about showing his enemies that what they support, he can tear down. It is all about displays of brute strength. He gets off on that, and in that sense, it seems not so much an autocracy but a flexocracy. Let me show you how I can flex my bicep as I use it to power my fist coming into your face. It’s not about any coherent values. It’s not about any North Star. It’s about showing that you can turn the boat 180 degrees around and that you can do whatever you want and you can bring the people who opposed you to their knees.

You are correct. Most are so spectacularly desperate to defend Trump that they are truly unwilling to discuss policy. This is a rather recent development and it has something to do with the dumbing down of information within the MAGA movement, and it has a lot more to do with sloganeering than it does discussion of real policy.

It happens to be an expert source for wine related businesses, though that thought probably never entered your mind. We are talking about tens of billions of dollars after all when it comes to wine importers, distributors and restaurants that serve fine wine, but that's probably not something you would ever know about because the Mont Clare wine that you consume, which is not of much relevance to the economy.

Neither Leavitt, nor Trump, nor anybody in his administration has any credibility whatsoever when it comes to Gaza and Israel. None, zero, nunca, nada. Trump has been kissing Bibi's butt for so long that he wouldn't recognize genocidal policy if it bit him on the ankles.

I cannot believe a Trump appointee is fawning over Putin. So strange. So thoroughly out of place. And he is accused of a lack of integrity? I though the whole administration were devout Christians? Men and women of absolute integrity. I am so disappointed.

I think when a bus driver causes death to others due to negligence of this sort, he should be charged with manslaughter and should serve a minimum of 10 years in prison. This kind of thing should not be taken lightly.

There are at least a dozen good reasons why the vast majority of wealthy people would have no interest in retiring in Thailand. The vast majority of us who do choose to retire here choose to do so at least partly because it's affordable. If I had a significant degree of wealth I might be spending a month or two of the year in Thailand, but I would be elsewhere for most of the year. Unfortunately the nitwits that are running the country are so self-absorbed, so arrogant, and so mindlessly ignorant, that they just don't get any of that and these are the same fools who have never bothered to address any of the problems that have been plaguing tourism or the nation for decades now.

So many American businesses are being negatively affected by these inane tariff policies. “At this point, no one can be certain whether today’s court ruling constitutes a reprieve; we will need to wait for the Supreme Court's response after hearing the appeal on Friday," said Nathan Washburn, partner of Massanois Fine Wine & Craft Spirits in New York. "We don’t see a short-term conclusion to the tariff issue based on what we know today. The primary challenge posed by tariffs is the cash payments required by US Customs at the port of entry," Washburn told Wine-Searcher. "For instance, if you order a container of wine for €100,000 and face a 10 percent tariff payment at the port before the wine arrives at your warehouse, you must sell the container, collect the funds, and cover all your normal operating expenses, including payment to the supplier, while also absorbing the upfront tariff cost as either a price increase or margin decrease. "We are part of a national supply chain that supports a broader ecosystem of over 8000 importers and wholesalers, more than 350,000 restaurants, and over 50,000 retailers across the country," Washburn said. "Tariff-driven price increases, margin reductions, and tightening cash flow contribute to the challenges faced by these thousands of operators and their employees as they strive to grow their businesses in an environment where employment costs, food costs, and rents are already rising." The feeling of uncertainty was the same on both sides of the Atlantic. "We still have to see what will happen definitively," Libero Rillo, owner of Fontanavecchia in Campania, Italy, told Wine-Searcher. "In a moment of global uncertainty, tariffs are an additional burden for a sector already under pressure. People have less money, more fear of spending, and consumption is slowing down. In this context, tariffs only worsened an already critical situation. "That said, the damage has already been done: ever since the announcement of the tariffs, the market reacted with a devaluation of the dollar, and today, regardless of court rulings, that effect remains. In practical terms, buying from Italy currently costs around 10 percent more, and that affects the entire supply chain. Of course, we hope for stability and a rebalancing of the markets. But we need clear, long-term decisions – not steps forward followed by steps back." Erica Nonni, who owns a marketing company that represents several foreign wine regions and producers, said the US has already lost business because of the uncertainty. The US Wine Trade Alliance says that for every dollar a US company spends on a European wine, US companies including importers, retailers and restaurateurs get $4.52. https://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2025/05/tariff-chaos-bites-for-us-importers

Simple minds tend to jump to conclusions without having any information to base those conclusions on. I've been a successful businessman my whole life, I still own a couple of companies in the US, and I travel back there 2 to 5 times a year, so just how uninformed does that make you?

Ultimately the people will decide and it does appear as if the majority in America do not like his tariff plans. A Marquette University Law School poll this month showed 37 percent of Americans support tariffs and 63 percent oppose them. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll earlier this month showed that more Americans (26 percent) consider tariffs Trump's biggest mistake than any other issue, and 57 percent of respondents said tariffs are harming the US economy. And RealClearPolitics, a Republican-affiliated polling company, said negative opinions of Trump spiked to the highest level of his second term after he first announced the tariffs in April.

Though that might be true the problem is that the harder Trump pushes other nations who are our allies (or our antagonists), the more he alienates them and the more sympathy he generates for them. I've long been very anti CCP, but it's getting at the point where I'm now sympathetic towards China. I want to buy their products! A good percentage of the planet probably feels the same way, and the exact opposite about America. He is not only not making America great again, he's eroding our influence dramatically.

You forgot to mention how incredibly well Clinton ran the economy. I can't think of a republican in recent history who was as competent as Clinton when it came to running the economy.

In the minds of many of us Trump is grossly overestimating the importance of the US and the dependence of other nations on the US. Granted the US economy is still huge, but it's not immune to damage, it's not immune to punishment by other nations, it could start shrinking, and it's not immune to crashing. Of course this could all just be some insane scheme to crash the US economy and the world economy with it, thereby making Trump and his super rich buddies even richer in the process. Who knows what lurks in the mind of this completely unhinged man? One thing is for certain, he's being very poorly advised by highly inexperienced and incompetent people, and he is going to lose a very significant percent of his support base if he continues with these insane policies. They're doing a pretty good job, just give him another year or two, many of his supporters could be out of work.

What Trump has done could precipitate nothing short of a major economic crisis. I think he's gone too far, I think he knows he's gone too far, I think his advisors know he's gone too far, but they're too cowardly to say anything, Fox News is starting to say that he's gone too far, and I think that it may be quite difficult for him to pull back from this brink. He may have set in motion a disaster of historic proportions and he could go down in history as being one of the clumsiest, most idiotic, most reckless, and most dangerous men in the history of America. I almost feel sorry for the man at this point, and that's a difficult thing for me to say, but I think the junk that's going to fall onto his ugly face is going to be an horrific thing to witness. Or a joyous thing, if you're not heavily invested in the American markets.