connda

Money is first created by bank as debt.

Then hypothecated debt, then rehypothecated debt, and then derivatives issued based on rehypothecated debt, then there is exponentially more debt then money, then there is a financial crisis, then the banks go crying to the government, then the government pledges it will save the banks by issuing more public debt.

Current and future taxpayer, bond holders, and depositors shoulder the burden. Bank executives collect bonuses. Politicians receive generous donations from banks.

It works until it doesn't. Study history.

Where does money come from? The US Federal Reserve

But tell us, who owns the US Federal Reserve?

The US Federal Reserve is a private, central bank.

As the old saying goes, the US Federal Reserve is about as related to the government as the Federal Express.

However, with that said, the US government and the Federal Reserve have been 'in bed together' for so long, you can essentially assume that it's a marriage.

I hope they are able to derail this bill.

If you want to invest in infrastructure that is good, but make good plans and make sure there is accountability. Doing it off the books only invites even more graft and the PTP is corrupt enough as it is.

Everyone knows that this loan was also to support the rice scam.

I have no problems with investments if opponents are allowed to check the spending.. not like this.

You know, they're still paying off the debt created during the 1997 crash. <deleted> are they thinking about by taking on another 2T ฿ in additional debt? The only upside I see is that the baht will be debased faster against the dollar (euro, pound, etc), well, at least for awhile. Any actual infrastructure repairs will be cosmetic or politically motivated while making the amart richer in the process. How about limited access (clover-leaf onramps and offramps) super-highways spanning North to South and East to West with funds set aside for the purchase of highway patrol cars and Westernize police training for traffic control and the enforcement of moving violations. That might actually save a few lives. Wait a minute! I lost my mind...it's about the money. Never mind.

Haven't you heard? Thakisn paid the 1997 debt off early with his own money.

Yeah, he probably paid it off with rehypothecated derivatives underwritten by the Goldman Sach's prop desk on margin that were tied to future Infrastructure Projects slated for approximately 2014. Doesn't Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, and friends have their fingers in just about every pot globally? I love Matt Taibbi's quote - "The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." That's about par for the course for the ventures of any of the 'elite' billionaires of today's world. Mr. T included.

I've sold personal cars before and the buyer has the right to expect to be able to test drive the car. No problem. I get in the car with the potential buyer an off we go. I'm with the buyer so he isn't going to steal the car, and the test drive was in a Western country where traffic is relatively predicable and the chances of an accident were negligible and the vehicles were fully insured.

I've never sold a motorcycle. A buyer should still have the right to expect a test drive. But! First we're in Thailand. Traffic is completely chaos and serious accidents happen disproportionately to motorcycles. I don't know the skill level of the driver and coupled with the accident rate, there is always a chance the the buyer will wreak the motorcycle during the test drive. I mean, how do you protect yourself here. Have the buyer sign a waiver assuming full responsibility for the bike including theft? Ask for a passport for collateral? To me it seems you need to do essentially the same thing as a motorcycle rental shop. The bike has 3rd class liability coverage, not full coverage, so I need to be assured that if the bike is damaged or stolen the buyer will assume responsibility, and have leverage to make it happen. What do ya do?

Any advice from TV members who have sold motorcycles in the past?

Reptiles don't carry rabies. Poison? Yes. Really nasty bacteria? Yes (think Komodo Dragons). Rabies. Nope!

I hope they are able to derail this bill.

If you want to invest in infrastructure that is good, but make good plans and make sure there is accountability. Doing it off the books only invites even more graft and the PTP is corrupt enough as it is.

Everyone knows that this loan was also to support the rice scam.

I have no problems with investments if opponents are allowed to check the spending.. not like this.

You know, they're still paying off the debt created during the 1997 crash. <deleted> are they thinking about by taking on another 2T ฿ in additional debt? The only upside I see is that the baht will be debased faster against the dollar (euro, pound, etc), well, at least for awhile. Any actual infrastructure repairs will be cosmetic or politically motivated while making the amart richer in the process. How about limited access (clover-leaf onramps and offramps) super-highways spanning North to South and East to West with funds set aside for the purchase of highway patrol cars and Westernize police training for traffic control and the enforcement of moving violations. That might actually save a few lives. Wait a minute! I lost my mind...it's about the money. Never mind.

Chai Yo!

If you don't have a high fever, you don't have Dengue. I've had it. It doesn't start with a rash.

I see the apologist conspiracy theorists are already crawling out of the woodwork.

Sex without consent is RAPE! I am sure she has the sms message to prove this.

Please use the facts instead of cherry picking and deliberately omitting details. Her father may be a TVF member.

Maybe in her drunken state she gave consent while she was in a blackout. No one on this forum knows the actual facts. It's he-said/she-said. Let the Thai courts work it out.

Fatherly advice for 20 year old females. Moderate or stay sober, and stay with your friend or friends.

What exactly are you trying to shield against?

RF from your lappie hurting you, RF getting into your lappie and hurting it, 'someone' reading your data by remote control?

Don't forget, shielding your lappie will stop the WiFi working.

The wireless card will generate RF radiation. I just turn my wireless card off before 95% of the time I'm hooked to an ethernet cable. And if I'm at a Wifi hot spot, my laptop isn't on my lap, it's on a table. So I'm not too concerned about RF.

The laptop also generates Electro-magnetic radiation as does any electronic device. A lot of debate about whether it's harmful or not. I personally don't know, but I'd rather err on the side of caution. So I wouldn't mind having a shielding pad that shields EMF and absorbs heat.

Has anyone seen any electro-magnetic radiation shields for laptops sold here in Thailand? I'd like to have some shielding between me and 'the boyz', if ya know what I mean. I can only find them online.

Two reasons to visit:

1. You're into freak shows

2. You're into anthropology.

I've never been. Read about them in National Geographic many, many moons ago. That's good enough for me.

Like someone suggested, let's tax those who are overweight or obese, for example, by increasing their social security contribution, proportionate to their excess weight.

And use the money for education.

Excellent suggestion. Why should I have to pay a tax because some fatties can't control themselves?

Actually, lefty won't let you do that, as obesity is a pre existing condition that must be covered.

Now if you let the market dictate who pays what, for whatever it is they want, all this nonsense goes away. But lefty can't stand that, as lefty needs as many people dependent on the government as possible.

The problem is obese people become a burden. Unless you think people get deliberately obese in order to have the government pay for their treatment???????????

Obese people are a burden? They are all potential Darwin Award nominees just waiting to drop out of the gene pool earlier than their slender counterparts.

Claiming the cheapest foods in the US are the "crappiest" is simply not true.Quit making stuff up and stating it as fact.

Are you for real?

Let's look at corn flakes in the USA, a staple food.

Price a box of highly processed sugary flakes (cheap) vs. a box or organic non-sugar flakes (expensive)

Thousands of examples like that.

Okay, compare cornflakes to oatmeal. Oatmeal is cheaper and healthier.

Thousands of examples like that.

Actually, you and buy and eat whole corn on the cob cheaper than you can eat cornflakes, even though the price has been driven up by the nut-sacks in government that think ethanol is good for the environment.

Just because YOU are locked into fast food, heat & eat and packaged foods, does not mean you can't eat healthy on the cheap in the US.

You're right about oatmeal. But I'm right that the U.S. food industry in general finds tricky ways to charge more for the healthier food options and offers crappy processed stuff cheaply. Similar things are happening in Thailand. People get hungry, they want to eat, the tricks of the food industry work very well on the masses.

the tricks of the food industry work very well on the masses.

Yeah, I love the advertising. Your children should drink this GMO and chemical ladened solution that we developed that will give them bunches of vitimins and minerals, protein, essential fatty oils, etc, etc, etc. Sweet Jesus, what a crock. It's all about the ฿฿฿

If your childrem eat a variety of in-season foods just like grandma and grandpa did, they'll be slim, slender, and healthy. And the food grandma and grandpa ate is still to this day inexpensive, well, unless you insist on shopping in a Westernize supermarket, then they will mark up the price two or three times for ya, but you can afford it, right?

I wouldn't feed that corporate processed junk to my dogs.

For those who beieve that government should involve themselves in the personal lifes of it's citizens, specifically in regards to the food you eat:

Question: If you are fit, slim, and athletic, was it your government that made you that way, or was it personal motivation and will power?

Question: If you are overweight, was it your government that made you that way, or was it you who chose to indulge in the foods you enjoy or to not indulge in sufficient exercise?

Question: If you are obese, was it your government that made you that way, or was it your total lack of personal will power to clean up your diet and to adequately exercise? (Exceptions made for the rare minority with medical conditions that cause obesity.)

So, since when is the government responsible for your actions and the consequense thereof. And persoanally, if you believe in regressive taxes, then you can take regressive taxes that disporportionally and negatively impact the poor and disfranchised, and put them where the sun don't shine.

If a government is a reflection of the will of it's people, and the populace considers this a social problem, then prehaps nutritional education starting in schools when kids are old enough to understand what they are being taught in conjuction with mandating that doctors take a minimum amount of credits in nutrtional education, and promote nutritional counseling in government hospitals might be a solution. That's where government might be effective in changing eating patterns.

Are we not talking about LOS ?...........

Yes but don't many poor Thais eat out of 7-11s? I reckon that is an obesity promoting food source.

The nearest 7/11 to our village is over 30KM away. Not much of a change that the poor folk are flocking there to get junk food that would cost them half a day's salary or more. Hummmm. I don't think so. There's plenty of local, home made kanom to be had for a fraction of the price, but I still don't see many fat kids unless mom and dad are pretty well to do and mobile. Then they bring it in from outside.

I like the poll. It gives me a relative measure of the proportion of liberals to conservatives (to apathetic) in the Thai Visa community. Now if the 'Nanny State supporters" could just obtain citizenship and get voted into parlament, you could make that tax come to fruition. Best of luck on that.

Couldn't see Doi Suthep from downtown today. Took a drive up to the top this afternoon. I wasn't able to make out the outlines of the mountain until I got to Huey Kaow and Nimmanhaemin Road. We could use a weather change and some wind to clear this inversion layer of smog out.

Slightly more complex answer, yes, under certain constraints.

Do you have mains power on site?

If yes then a grid-tie system will be able to offset the cost of running your aircon without all the issues of energy storage (expensive batteries) and start-up power consumption (big, expensive inverter).

Have a look at the grid-tie systems from Amorn Solar http://www.amornsolar.com/ . Cost 70,000 Baht (2,000W) to 439,000 Baht (20,000W 3-phase), payback without a feed-in tariff is probably about 7 years, if the government actually get around to implementing their proposed feed-in tariff somewhat shorter.

There are also solar-assistors that you can bolt on to your aircon to reduce its power consumption, how effective they actually are I cannot comment http://www.saveenergyasia.com/products/solaraircon.html

I was just thinking of hooking up a bufallo to a circlar tread wheel with a gearbox and generator in the middle. It wouldn't cost too much hay

I'm more than happy to let the Thai folk talk while I act totally ignorant. It's amazing what you here and what you can learn when folk think you're functionally illitrate in the Thai language.

I would have told my wife's cousin that Mr. Somchai doesn't think that farang know how to light BBQ fires. Eventually it gets back to Mr. Somchai <surprise>.

Some folk talk to me including friends of the family and folks we hire to do this and that. Some don't want to talk to me at all. That's fine with me. I just listen and learn.

If you understand Thai, but Thai folks don't think you do, you weild an immense amount of power. You're a farang. They all talk about us. Don't take the slights personally. Let it go

I agree FJ that nobody can predict what will happen next.

I disagree that China is content with the current state but agree that a unified Korea is not what they want. China has given very strong, unprecedented signals in the last 2 years that it feels NK has strayed way too far from the [Chinese] fold. The most recent being a public invitation to Kim Jong-Un to visit China. Such a statement has never before been issued.

Some strategists speculate that if NK govt were to spectacularly and suddenly collapse forcing SK to implement its immediate unification plan, then China would grab a band of 50 - 100 km of the top of NK as a de facto permanently occupied zone in order to avoid having American troops on its border.

Good post of observations and comments especially concerning Beijing's horror of horrors, US troops stationed at its border.

To which I would add South Korea and Beijing together don't want reunification of the two Koreas.

Seoul has done exhaustive examination and analysis of the reunification of Germany and concluded - justifiably - that because the very wealthy former West Germany is still paying for it, South Korea cannot afford it. S Korea can afford it but it would be set back considerably for some period of time. Beyond economics, the sociocultural shock to the North Koreans would be a significant drag on integrating the two societies.

Beijing for years now has been quietly but unsuccessfully pushing Pyongyang to begin Deng Xiao Peng style reforms so that the North can develop economically in the (dubious) style and fashion of the CCP-PRC itself, given such development would resolve the recurring question of when the North will collapse into regional chaos or, worse, lash out while collapsing.

North Koreans such as Jang who, encouraged and supported by Beijing, believe they have seen an opening to advocate a Deng style of economic development have always ended up put away in some remote camp. Now they are being shot and they are being shot with a public fanfare that is humiliating Beijing among the Six Party Talks member states. (Moscow, Washington, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Pyongyang.)

It's no secret throughout the region that the Kim dynasty keeps giving Beijing the finger and now has thrown up its whole right arm. Beijing has lost so much face to the Kim dynasty over an extended period that Beijing has begun to look like the Cheshire Cat but with a frown.

No one knows what will happen to include Kim the Fat but given Kim's impudent new escalations a reassuring (and vengeful) Beijing organized coup in Pyongyang appears the only viable course of action.

Good analysis.

Now just keep that up guys! Nice first baby step. Put the taxi mafia on notice then start working on the Jet Ski and Tuk Tuk scams. Heck, give me a work permit and I'll volunteer to help in Sting Operations for free.

He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword!

Young Kim might find himself being taken out by means other than a covert internal coup in due course.

What a shocking and terrible loss that would be to the world,.. NOT!

How many people did Stalin kill? He lived to a ripe old age.