No-one knows of course.

But I would be grateful for your views on this.

It's over 74 to the pound today I see.......

It's the best since the crash when it was 95 anything over 50 then i'm happy in remembrance of the 45 days.

I see 80 THB coming! Course I'm an optimistic git!

I also have no idea but before 1997 it was about 40 -42 to the £

The way things are going here with the debt mountain and NPL a euphemism for people who have said sod it and cleared off.

Thousands and thousands of empty properties and still building more there are hundreds of properties that have never been occupied.

It's only a matter of time before the next crash.

No-one knows of course.

But I would be grateful for your views on this.

It's over 74 to the pound today I see.......

at the peak of the asian crash i was getting 105 bahts to the pound .

thats when i built my house , worked out cheap

my word beer was cheap then !!

farangs were changing up money galore , the trick was to wait until it peaked ,nobody knew how high it would go , it just kept going up and up !!

Thai baht is under pressure due to the soaring costs of oil and that asian economies rely on oil for their manufacturing base . and thai have deficit now.

No-one knows of course.

But I would be grateful for your views on this.

It's over 74 to the pound today I see.......

at the peak of the asian crash i was getting 105 bahts to the pound .

thats when i built my house , worked out cheap

my word beer was cheap then !!

farangs were changing up money galore , the trick was to wait until it peaked ,nobody knew how high it would go , it just kept going up and up !!

Thai baht is under pressure due to the soaring costs of oil and that asian economies rely on oil for their manufacturing base . and thai have deficit now.

The Good old days eh?

"Up and down" and as we all know history has a nasty habit of repeating itself.

As said before the worse i ever got was around 1992-3 when the £pound hit 33bt. but the greenback$ was still pegged at 25.....crazy but then in late 97 early 98 as we were all sitting in the Honey H bar the magic 95 beeped.

One old retired teacher (65 years old) amongst us changed £5K the next morning and moved down to Pattaya.(with almost 1/2 mill dints)

Heard that he is still there He likes the ladies

Just when I was feeling happy that I had covered all my Legal fees etc with the extra Baht I have made due to the rise from 70 to 74, you buggers tell me of times when things went spirelling......dissatisfied now. Ugh.

Yeah, I remember being out in BKK with sterling travellers cheques in July '97 just after the Handover. Luckily I changed a grand early in July but waited until the end to change the rest!!

Today though I think those days are somewhat over. Everyone's panicking about an Asian crash but in reality things are going to heat up a lot more in the region before any kind of bubble 'bursts'. Being in finance myself, I thought I might offer my comments on one or two people's ''projections''.

The way things are going here with the debt mountain and NPL a euphemism for people who have said sod it and cleared off.

Thousands and thousands of empty properties and still building more there are hundreds of properties that have never been occupied.

It's only a matter of time before the next crash.

This is the common projection on SEA, particularly on Thailand, which the Western media is brilliantly ignorant of. Its not quite as simple as saying thousands of properties are vacant; many of these are as yet undeveloped or used for occasional supply, i.e. business travellers. NYC hs the same number (approx) of high quality accomodation available but no one is forcasting a country-wide meltdown! More to the point, what real relevance do real estate prices have on economic growth anyway? I think people are confusing the issue with interest rate volatility, a very different thing indeed! It always amazes me just how negative Westerners are of SEA real estate.

As regards debts, which one or two of you brought up, Thai banks have paid off many of the 'hybrid' loans created by sharks post-97 that were severly holding back the economy's growth. Banks were previously held back from loaning due to having credit risk problems themselves - mostly due to these hybrid obligations. Credit has started to free up in the economy, and with signs of investment capital seeping down from China, it seems unlikely the economy is going to slow, let alone 'crash'.

Thai baht is under pressure due to the soaring costs of oil and that asian economies rely on oil for their manufacturing base . and thai have deficit now.

Again, I think the concept that oil can pull an entire economy that is not even dependent upon oil production as a major source of national income is unrealistic. Thai Baht is dollar-linked. Oil is dollar-linked. There is no inherent contradiction here. Dollar looks only to strengthen after US elections finish. Plus, oil's impact upon currencies and markets is waning. Very, very unlikely to create a crash.

As regards debts, which one or two of you brought up, Thai banks have paid off many of the 'hybrid' loans created by sharks post-97 that were severly holding back the economy's growth. Banks were previously held back from loaning due to having credit risk problems themselves - mostly due to these hybrid obligations. Credit has started to free up in the economy, and with signs of investment capital seeping down from China, it seems unlikely the economy is going to slow, let alone 'crash'.

One of the banks major problems is that they simply refuse to acknowledge the true value of their assets. A case in point is the huge number of reposessed houses that they have on their books, which have deteriorated to the point of being unsaleable. They continue to value these at full market value on their books, which makes for nice reading of course. In reality, these properties are now worth only land value (whatever that may be) less demolition costs, which would make a huge difference in the asset figure of all the banks here, IF they were only honest enough to admit it.

As regards debts, which one or two of you brought up, Thai banks have paid off many of the 'hybrid' loans created by sharks post-97 that were severly holding back the economy's growth. Banks were previously held back from loaning due to having credit risk problems themselves - mostly due to these hybrid obligations. Credit has started to free up in the economy, and with signs of investment capital seeping down from China, it seems unlikely the economy is going to slow, let alone 'crash'.

One of the banks major problems is that they simply refuse to acknowledge the true value of their assets. A case in point is the huge number of reposessed houses that they have on their books, which have deteriorated to the point of being unsaleable. They continue to value these at full market value on their books, which makes for nice reading of course. In reality, these properties are now worth only land value (whatever that may be) less demolition costs, which would make a huge difference in the asset figure of all the banks here, IF they were only honest enough to admit it.

Yeah, thats a very good point. I wonder whether you could make good money starting a fund and look at buying up this reposessed property on the banks' balance sheets at a discounted rate, doing it up, renting (i.e. holding for long term speculation) and selling it on?