Transcript of the above video: 

So initially the title I was going to make for this video was going to be the Capital Controls are Impacting the Thai Property Market but then I decided to broaden this out a little bit because this has bigger ramifications; I've discussed this in prior videos. 

That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Thai Property Market Rebound. Quoting directly: "Regarding condo transfers by foreign buyers, last year there were 14,800 units transferred, up 2.2% from the previous year, with a total value of 60.9 billion baht, down to 10.7%. He attributed the decline in value to fewer transfers of luxury units as some countries have begun to tighten outbound investment, while the Thai Government implemented stricter enforcement against grey capital." I like how like how grey is just, that that notion “grey capital” is just a term that's just caught on now and I would not say it's caught on. There is an attempt through various media outlets to make this just a foregone conclusion thing. It's a buzzword. It's designed to make you not think anymore once you hear the term, “Oh, it's grey capital, oh.” What does that mean? It's like the term “money laundering”. It didn't exist prior to 1987 at least in the American legal lexicon - I guess legal lexicon would be sort of a redundancy there - but in any event, it's the same technique, and I'm really getting tired of all of this talking about our own money or wanting to have privacy in your own financial transactions as being tantamount to doing something elicit or illegal hence the usage of the term “Gray Capital”,  just like the term “Money Laundering”. 

That said, quoting further: "Foreign buyers accounted for 14.7% of the total condos transferred last year and 25% of the total value." And here's my point. As I have talked about in other videos regarding the OECD and the undue foreign influence that has been brought to bear on Thailand in my opinion, primarily through the organs of the so-called World Economic Forum and unfortunately through what I call the Rump Coalition Parliament of last year, mostly last summer, we saw this very much out in the open but we are seeing the ramifications down the road now. These issues with gray capital and there are Capital Controls throughout the international banking sector and to what end? Again it's just toward this totalitarian track and trace everything Digital Wallet model it seems to be to me, but setting aside the issues of personal freedoms etc., it's bad business. It's having an impact - as it is being said in this article - "the decline in value to fewer transfers of luxury units, as some countries have begun to tighten outbound investment, while the Thai Government implemented stricter enforcement against gray capital" which again whatever that means. It's just whatever they say it is, but basically capital controls. More scrutiny, more control over being able to transfer money around, and what's happening? It's having a detrimental impact directly on the Property Market. It will continue to have a detrimental impact on Thailand's economy in a broad sense. I've talked about this before. Velocity of money and liquidity. You start to tighten those things up and your economy starts to get pretty moribund pretty fast. 

So again, I was thinking about this purely in a property context, but it is broader than that and it is something we all really should be very concerned about. The Thai Community, the expat community, everybody. Because the more and more we see this stuff, which again as I've discussed, is there any due process associated with the labeling of anything as “Gray Capital”, and I mean due process before they start rooting around in our bank accounts and holding up our bank accounts and freezing our bank accounts? Where is it? It's clearly not there. So that said, we will certainly be keeping you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.