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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thailand's recent elections and things, and then the banking establishment is hinting at a credit downgrade. I'll get into the content of the citation here in the moment, but I wanted to explain the thumbnail. So the thumbnail is actually from the Taylor Sheridan, I call it Taylor Sheridan series; I don't know what the sort of Yellowstone, I guess you could call it sort of the Yellowstone Universe - 1923 - which is a series that follows the Dutton family in as the title suggests, 1923. 1883 to my mind was an absolute masterpiece. I'm originally from Kansas. There are some shots in that where I am almost certain they filmed it in Western Kansas. The opening scene of 1883 in fact where you see - I think it's the Comanche tribe - I don't even know what tribe it was actually now I'm thinking about it, but they are having this altercation with them and in the background is the sun setting and it's just out on the planes. I mean that just looked like a mural you could have painted of Kansas, it just looked like it. But 1883 was great; I loved 1923 as well. The thumbnail comes from a scene where Timothy Dalton, my first memory of who James Bond was by the way, is interacting with Harrison Ford's character which I think is Jacob Dutton if I'm not mistaken, I can't remember his name, the character’s name off the top of my head, but he's a banker and he is basically trying to steal their land out from under them by paying their property tax and then if they don't pay him back by a certain date, he'll just call note on them and steal their land, basically take their land. So I'm using that thumbnail because in this analysis, I see a lot of parallels to what went on there so that's kind of the reason for the thumb. 

Now just really quickly, I get into deep dive analysis on matters pertaining to geopolitics, economics, as well as things like banking tax, how it impacts expat land here in Thailand in our paid news service. You can email us, [email protected], to get information about subscribing to our paid news service and we can get you on the email list for that. Also while I'm talking to my game here, it is probably worth pointing out that my better half and I set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok, Pancake Palace, as the name implies breakfast anytime, as well as American Diner style food including Polish sausages, hot dogs; we have got cheeseburgers, hamburgers as well as buffalo wings, chilli bowls, grilled cheese sandwiches. If you're interested in American Diner style food or breakfast anytime, please check the links below. Come on by, we would love to see you. 

Now that said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Fears over sovereign rating revision. Now let's bear in mind, I just made a couple of videos here recently where I was talking about what I perceive to be was a narrative being set up that Thailand had some issue in its financial sector. And I brought up the fact that back in 1997, this country was effectively economically put on its back, or at least its back foot insofar as you can make arguments all you want, but international financial interests came in here and put Thailand at a disadvantage that it basically sort of if you will, fed upon Thailand in certain ways over the intervening roughly decade. I came in at the very end of that. I came to Asia first in 2007, came to Thailand in 2008, so I was sort of seeing where, actually Jim Rickards wrote a really good excerpt in one of his Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse books. I can't remember which one it was, the Death of Money or Currency Wars, whichever one it was, there's four of them. Just look up, Google Jim Rickards, Four Horsemen books, and in one of those books he talks about Thailand and how in '97, from about '97 to '07 they had to do anything in their power to get foreign exchange into Thailand because they were propping up their currency on the international market. And the end result of that was Thailand had to do and take in a lot of people and set a lot of policies, that weren't necessarily overly in her interest because it was very much in her interest to keep the currency afloat if you will, which she did by the way, and paid off all her IMF loans and kept her financial house in order. By the way, when the same circumstances befell the West, they didn't do what they told Thailand they had to do; they did the opposite. They printed money and called it quantitative easing. It's important to point that out. Meanwhile, as Rickards pointed out, it was like a pendulum swinging. Round about 2007 it began swinging the other way and then we saw it sort of culminate in the first part of the original Trump Administration, where we actually saw a ‘beggar thy neighbour’ situation going on where countries were then starting to wanting to weaken their currencies so as to keep their export market up; Rickards goes into that in far better detail.

The point I am trying to make is I think it is fairly clear in retrospect that Thailand was the subject of an economic raid in the '90s, and as I brought up in my prior videos, I am kind of wondering if narrative is being set up or they have been trying to kind of create one during all this political sort of volatility here in Thailand because I think they see that a more nationalistic kind of Government is coming in; that Mr. Anutin and his Coalition that he has managed to put together are not necessarily going to be interested in the prerogatives of the World Economic Forum. I am very hopeful we reject all of this stuff having to do with the OECD. That remains to be seen, but I think it is funny that the moment the tide started shifting away from let's call it a cadre here in Thailand in the power centres that was in favour of sort of international financial interests let's say, what I would call undo foreign influence - you can go back and watch my prior videos on that -  the moment that the wind started to shift on that, we started to see this narrative coming up à la '97 that Thailand might have some problems. Meanwhile, if you actually did the deep drill down on the state of the banking sector, the banking sector here in Thailand is solid; they learned their lessons from the '90s. This country is heavily inoculated against financial/monetary machinations of sort of foreign interests, so again it is all kind of a storm and a teacup and in my opinion being sort of spun up from nothing. But that said, quoting directly again from this Bangkok Post article: Fears over sovereign rating revision. "Bankers are increasingly concerned about a potential downgrade of the country's sovereign credit rating in the future due to weakening tax revenues and rising public debt." Well one, rising public debt, it was the Thaksinites who came in here and wanted this Digital Wallet that we were all supposed to go into a big bunch of national debt for, and also weakening tax revenues as a direct result of international pressure to shut down Thailand's economy during the so-called COVID pandemic. That is a fact. You cannot shut down a nation's entire economy for years on end - by the way at the behest of the World Health Organization, headed by a Communist by the way in the form of Mr. Tedros - you cannot expect that country to maintain the same level of tax revenues after its economy has been affectively smothered for years on end, okay. So these buzz words of 'weakening tax revenues' and 'rising public debt', it's important to understand what the sources of those issues are. Quoting further: "According to Piti Tantakasem, Chief Executive of TMBThanachart Bank, Thailand faces growing risk of a credit rating downgrade as tax revenues continue to fall short of government targets." - well first of all, the government sets the target on the money they want, not taking into consideration market factors on the ground, most notably they never seem to take into consideration that they themselves shut down the economy. It was their actions that forced people to shut down their economy, and in many cases, killed many businesses. You can't just turn an economy on and off and expect all the businesses to survive, I guess reasonable people can't. If you are a bureaucrat or some globalist somewhere, you can expect that, because you don't live in the real world. That said, quoting further: "while public debt shows signs of increasing." Well why is that? The last government headed by these Shinawatras primarily, who were enamoured with the World Economic Forum and the OECD, and wanted to saddle Thailand with a huge increase in national debt initially - it was brought down - now there are cases in Court over where they actually got the money for the so-called Digital Wallet which they wanted to impose on everybody as a digital token system which would track and trace all the transactions in Thailand, even of the smallest poorest people in the socioeconomic strata, and be able to turn it on and off, and be able to determine what you buy with it, and set a perimeter geographically where you could spend it. That was where this public debt increase primarily has come from; and by the way that government has gone now. Quoting further, quote: "Although the current public debt-to-GDP ratio is not yet alarming and remains below the ceiling, a slower pace of GDP growth combined with rising debt could accelerate the ratio in the period ahead," he said." Well this is another one, where they make this sensational headline, "oh we have got all these problems" and then you dig into it, no we actually don't have problems. If anything, things are more economically sound than they are letting on. As we got into in that other video, when I made the video about the rating agencies saying we may have a problem here in Thailand, when you went to the last paragraph of that article, it turned out oh all the DSIBs (the Domestically Systemically Important Banks) are actually fine. They have done stress tests on them and the banking sector here is sound and solid. Meanwhile though, if you read the first line of that article, it was phrased and couched in such a way as if it was anything but. Quoting further, and I think this is important to point out here: "According to the Public Debt Management Office, the public debt-to-GDP ratio tallied 63.2% at the end of July 2025, compared with 63.9% in 2024" - so it was 63.2% in 2025 and it was 63.9% in 2024, so it went down year-on-year; it's getting better is the conclusion to that analysis. So what are we talking about when we are talking about some problem? Quoting further: "64.3% in 2023 and 63.8% in 2022." So if you go back to '23, it was 64.3 in 2023, then in 2024, it went down to 63.9 and then in 2025 it went down again to 63.2. So the trend over 3 years is down. What are we talking about? Quoting further: "The Government already raised the debt ceiling to 70% of GDP in the post pandemic period, up from 60% previously," - which was not popular at the time because the Thais are well aware of how financial and monetary and economic policy works, because they had to live through '97 and they knew they didn't want to see their debt-to-GDP ratio go up, but it did go up it. It was basically just kind of rammed through and we were sort of told, yeah this is how it's going to be.

Then meanwhile, the whatever you want to call it Government, primarily spearheaded by the Shinawatra cadre, comes in in 2023 and decides to try to foist this Digital Wallet on us which they wanted a huge amount of money; it was like half a trillion Baht as I recall to begin with, and then they sort of whittled it down which you had to wonder, what was all that extra money going to go for, if you managed to do the handout without all that. In any event, then they whittled it down, then they took from other banking protocols that had already been funded - which there is currently a case pending that is kind of called a “nuclear case” that could result in serious issues associated with that, how they got the funding for all of that - but okay they went ahead and went out and did this handout but what they really wanted to do was the Digital Wallet and they wanted to put us in debt further to do it. And meanwhile, there was not a mandate, electoral mandate to do any of that because as we know Pheu Thai didn't win a majority. Quoting further: "Thailand's economic potential has been in decline for decades.” Who says? Quoting further: “Before the 1997 Asian financial crisis, GDP growth averaged 7-8% annually, then dropped to around 5% afterwards.” Yeah, after you hamstrung us; the Western Financial systems hamstrung us, and Soros came in here and did what he did to the British when he broke the British Pound. It is like breaking the legs of a cow and then ridiculing it for not being able to stand up.  Quoting further: "Following the post-flood crisis in 2012 and subsequent political turmoil,” - again you could make some arguments there was some undue foreign influence associated with that – “growth slowed further to about 3%.” The other thing to bear in mind is why does nobody bring up the fact that American growth has slowed significantly over the years. Economies that build up to a certain point, become a certain level of sophisticated, there is a point in which they are not going to grow at the same rates that they are going to grow, that they have grown at in the past. You can go to some jurisdiction that has no economic activity or at least no tabulated economic activity, and that's important to point out. GDP is entirely a function of bank credit. So they are only tabulating the part of the economy that they themselves have control over and can tabulate; that is important to note. Thailand has a natural “informal economy” as we will get to here in a moment, that they have sometimes called the black economy to scare us all so that we have to be tracked and traced because there are scammers and they need to know everything you do. Well no, the fundamental fact of the matter is they pulled more stuff in from the informal economy, they will use that as a pretext for the narrative that, "look at how much we have caused it to grow”, when in reality all that has happened is they are tabulating it now from all of their totalitarian tracking and tracing." That is important to note. But again constantly say "oh Thailand has got economic problems" when they are not even tabulating the full economy. Quoting further: "In the post-pandemic it has hovered around 2%." Well yeah, the post-pandemic period. You mean when the government came in and shut us all down at the behest again of undue foreign influences primarily the World Health Organization headed up by an Ethiopian Communist; these are facts. Quoting further: "The private sector, in collaboration with the Bank of Thailand, the National Economic and Social Development Council and the Fiscal Policy Office recently issued a white paper titled "Reinvent Thailand" as a platform to sustain the economy over the long term." How about just keep Thailand the way it is. How about leave Thailand alone? That's my motto. I like Thailand how it is. It doesn't need to be reinvented. Quoting further: "The initiative emphasises structural reforms, focusing on addressing household debt." Okay, they keep harping on this. They go on and on about household debt. Why? It's unsecured household debt. That's an important point to bring up. Yeah, back prior to the '97 crisis, the banks came in here and handed out credit cards like candy. I know old hands that were here before it and they remember it, and then everything went pear-shaped and they claimed "oh, Thailand has all this debt, all this debt." Notice, and we will get into the citation here, and that is the point of the thumbnail too. Informal versus formal debt. I think what they are talking about when they are talking about “formal debt” is they want to mortgage your houses Thailand. They want that debt attached to the land because they want the land. Just like in 1993 where Timothy Dalton - I think his name is Donald in the series - comes to the Dutton ranch. He wants the land; that's what he's encumbering them with. He's encumbering them with debt to steal the land. That's what's happening here. Quoting further, and it is also important to point out. In the past, when these Banks loaned out all this unsecured debt, that's on them. If you loan to people that couldn't pay back, that's your risk as a banker. It's not on us as a country to ameliorate that for you. Your business is banking; you take risks for a living. Suck it up. Quoting further: "And strengthening the private sector across the supply chain through integrated solutions.” Oh what? Like the totalitarian token of the digital wallet or the Nirvana Glasnost of the Data Lake of Fire that I've talked about in other videos where they are going to make a big Data Lake of all of us so they can track and trace everything we do and they know every little transaction we've ever made so they can suck as much possible wealth out of us as they parasitically can. Quoting further, and this is key here: “For households, the project aims to expand access to formal credit.” That is the operative term there: formal. What is formal going to mean? I am betting you anything it means it has got to be attached to your dwelling; it's got to be attached to your real estate. Now there's nothing wrong with having a mortgage; there's nothing wrong with having real estate, but if they are trying to do it much like the banker in 1923, in order to encumber folks over here in Thailand that may not even have a full understanding of the obligations they are signing on to, I find that deeply, deeply troubling. And it looks to me like it is a direct attack on the land here in Thailand, a direct attempt through a sort of roundabout, indirect way of gaining control of that land through "formal credit", as opposed to “informal credit” which they didn't get paid back on, and they're still ruing the day that they ever handed that out. Quoting further: "And reduce reliance on informal debt by promoting a transparent financial database." Again, Nirvana Glasnost: the Data Lake. Yeah, they want to track us all, trace us all, and why? Why do they want to do that? Because they want to extract every ounce of wealth out of us that they can, and they also want to formally secure our debt so that they can come after our houses if we fail to pay it off.