Transcript of the above video: 

Unlike virtually any other video I have ever made, I am going to appeal even at the beginning of this video, for not just folks to like and subscribe to this video, but to please share it. And the reason is I think I have come upon something, it hit me within 8 hours of making this video. Basically last night, I was laying in bed, and I had kind of the antithesis of the Eureka moment of Archimedes where he figured out the principle of displacement by sitting in the bathtub, and he went running down the street naked saying "Eureka, I have figured it out" sort of thing. It was sort of the antithesis of that insofar as I think I have fallen upon what I can only describe as what could be a very negative outcome for Thailand in terms of banking and her overall economy which I will get into the deep analysis of that here in a moment. But I would ask the audience that watches these videos regularly - and that is primarily made up of the Expat Community here and you are very much appreciated, I thank you - but there is also a cohort of English-speaking Thais that I am well aware also watch these videos and I am hoping that you folks also will take heed to this video because I think I was sort of misdirected insofar as my concerns about the OECD and the WEF and their undue influences I have discussed at length in many other videos on this channel, and I was more concerned about conceptual issues associated with Thai liberties, hence the title sort of taken from Julius Caesar, Marc Anthony saying "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears". I am hoping to gain some attention in this video to this issue, and not for what I have been talking about in the past which is just the sort of general threat if you will to inherent Thai liberty. No, this is more acute, and I will get into the acuteness of it here in a moment.  But back to my audience, please share this if for no other reason, Expat Community, if you are hopeful that we might see a rollback of some of this egregious and frankly onerous banking policy in the past roughly one month that we have seen being rolled out, I think if policy makers here in Thailand see the conclusions that I am going to draw to what is going on here - what I see is going on here - they may at least put a moratorium on this stuff to basically re-examine it before rolling it out further because it is in my opinion, I am going to go ahead and put this sort of meme from the film Clear and Present Danger where the President in that film, he is talking about drug cartels representing a "clear and present danger". I think that this represents a clear and present danger to Thailand's economy and go ahead and throw Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars up there, Return of the Jedi, where he says, "It's a trap". I truly think I was looking at this from one angle, just purely sort of the personal liberty and privacy aspects of it - my views that it represented a threat to those liberties here in Thailand. More acutely, I think this whole thing has proven to be, it is a Trojan Horse designed to undermine Thailand's Banking system and thereby triggering a mechanism not unlike 1997. In fact, I think it is very similar to 1997 and I think the foreign undue influencers if you will, who want to bring this about, are doing this in a sort of neo-colonialist if you will, operation if you will, to undermine Thailand's economy so they can indirectly and directly benefit, in much the same way the West in many ways, benefited from the terrible position Thailand was put in economically in the aftermath of 1997. 

I came to this conclusion because we have been inundated frankly with inquiries, correspondence from folks talking about the banking situation, problems they are having, their accounts are being frozen, their digital accounts are being frozen, they are going to the bank, they are having all kinds of problems, and my first response was this is awful. I looked at it from the liberty standpoint, privacy standpoint, and then I said to myself, "people aren't going to keep banking here", and this is when it hit me like a ton of bricks. That may be the point. These, I think primarily European influences, these European interests want to trigger something similar to '97 for Thailand so that they are quite frankly and I will get into citing why I would call them these, faltering economies can be unduly enriched at Thailand's expense is basically what I am talking about here. And let me also be clear, I do not believe that this is, I don't think the Americans have anything to do with this. Now you can look at my background and you can say I may have some inherent bias, but that is not why I think that. I think that precisely because when Trump came in, he specifically rejected in an Executive Order the OECD specifically citing national sovereignty. Let me get to that. Going over here to whitehouse.gov. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global Tax deal. Quoting directly: "Memorandum for the Secretary of the Treasury, The United States Trade Representative, The Permanent Representative of the United States to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Subject: The Organization for Co-operation and Development Global Tax Deal. Quote: "The OECD Global Tax Deal supported under the prior Administration not only allows extra territorial jurisdiction" - which means a foreign power having jurisdiction within the national boundaries of another power - so that was one thing he was rejecting it on, "over American income but also limits our Nation's ability to enact tax policies that serve the interest of American businesses and workers. Because of the Global Tax Deal and other discriminatory foreign tax practices, American companies may face retaliatory International tax regimes if the United States does not comply with foreign tax policy objectives." As I talked about in other videos, this represents a danger to national sovereignty because foreign sovereigns can say oh because you collected X amount from nationals of our country in your country, we get to extract X amount from you. I have discussed that previously in other videos. Quoting further: "This memorandum recaptures our Nation's sovereignty and economic competitiveness by clarifying that the Global Tax Deal has no force or effect in the United States." Quoting further: "The Secretary of the Treasury and The Permanent Representative of the United States to the OECD shall notify the OECD that any commitments made by the prior Administration on behalf of the United States with respect to the Global Tax Deal have no force or effect within the United States absent an act by the Congress adopting the relevant provisions of the Global Tax Deal." 

As discussed previously, Thailand has been - since this new government has been in, since 2023 - Thailand has been "exploring" the idea of OECD, but again, to the best of my knowledge, Parliament hasn't passed any legislation enacting this. Similar to what is being described here thar Trump rejected, they said look you have come in here under this the auspices of 'we are exploring it’ based on the notion that we intend to possibly pass legislation. We are not doing that, and I am affirmatively telling you we are not doing that. That's what Trump is saying. We have had to deal with under this Government here thus far, we have had to deal with this "exploration" of OECD and since then, we have been seeing all of these changes to banking protocols, this alignment of oh we need you to come in, multiple times in some cases, and align your SIM card to your bank records - very almost Soviet type stuff - and I have discussed this at length in many other videos, but it's a definite byproduct of the OECD and in my opinion it also runs part and parcel with the policies being pushed by the World Economic Forum who this Government or at least I should say the Core Coalition Party, which currently makes up what I call the Rump Coalition that is currently albeit rather nominally and through a marginal sense, governing Thailand seems so enamoured with. The prior Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin seemed enamoured with the World Economic Forum as I discussed at length. The now suspended current Prime Minister of Thailand, Paetongtarn Shinawatra who we are still awaiting a final Court ruling coming this Friday on her fate politically, but she had the envoy from the World Economic Forum to the Purple Room not some 2 months ago which I discussed at length at that time. Again they seem enamoured with these policies for whatever reason, and I don't want to get into their possible motives, but long story short I was viewing it purely from the standpoint of “oh this goes after our liberties, worry about this from a privacy standpoint”, I'm starting to think this is a Trojan Horse. This is designed to undermine the banking system itself and cause economic calamity for Thailand not unlike 1997 which would then benefit the European interests that are behind these policy pushes to begin with. And again, I don't want this video to be viewed as hyperbole, but I do want it to be viewed as a warning to everyone and again it's my reasoning for I want people to share it. I do not want to see anything akin to lack of confidence in Thailand's banking system. To be clear, I think this can be rolled back. I think we have a real opportunity here especially in coming weeks to see a U-turn on many policy objectives that have been promulgated these last 2 years that quite frankly I don't think there has been any popular mandate for whatsoever since the Coalition was created in 2023. So let's start there. This is not a time to panic. It's a time to reasonably assess the situation and make policy decisions that are in the best interest of Thailand. But that said, what am I talking about with regard to a Trojan Horse?

Okay as I have discussed, I've been getting emails, calls, all kinds of messages, comments and videos of people talking about all kinds of onerous stuff that is put on them from banking. Now I am starting to see people say, "hey I am just going to start pulling my money out. What do I need to do to possibly do that?" Now I'm not saying that there is an overwhelming consensus of people that want to do that, but people are concerned. What happens if that concern sort of manifests itself into a larger number of people saying, "hey I don't want to continue banking." Could that have the impact like in the film, Sneakers, I'll go ahead and put a meme up from Sneakers, I'll put a link in the description below from the film Sneakers where Ben Kingsley is talking to Robert Redford and he says, "Posit: People think a bank is financially shaky. Result: People begin to withdraw their money. Conclusion: The bank actually is financially shaky." That was the thing that came into my mind is why is this still being pushed? Why push this? Why incessantly push this when it could have a detrimental impact on people's desire to bank in Thailand, and ultimately, the overall banking system? And at that moment, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  

In my mind, and this brings us to the reason for the thumbnail. The thumbnail is from the movie The Jackal with Richard Gere and Bruce Willis. Sort of a spoiler alert here. The end of the film there is like a twist ending, where they find out they are actually protecting the wrong person. Link in the description below to that scene, but basically he says, Richard Gere's character is talking to Sidney Poitier actually is in that film also in the movie Sneakers by the way, he says to Sidney Poitier, he says, we have been chasing after this guy, we have been hot on his tail and what has bothered me is he is so cautious but he still keeps coming" and it ultimately - again spoiler alert - the twist is they are guarding the wrong person. They think they need to be guarding the FBI Director, and it turns out they need to be guarding the First Lady; that is the sort of twist. This is the moment that hit me in my head and the reason for the thumbnail is it all came from I thought of that movie, and I said why have they kept coming, even though this could be detrimental to the banking system here in Thailand? Why has this continued? And then I thought situation involving COVID here where officials here in Thailand, in my opinion were acting in good faith, but at the end of the day unfortunately I think that Tedros, the Head of the WHO as well as other foreign nationals outside of Thailand, had nefarious designs on various countries throughout the world in their COVID policy. But the upshot was once certain triggers, once certain mechanisms were put in place, bureaucracies and institutions here in Thailand began acting sort of almost mechanically. And I am not casting aspersions; they did what they needed to do. They zipped up the country, they sort of hermetically sealed it; they put a travel block, people couldn't get in because a pandemic was declared. Now you can go back and look at all of that - I don't want to muddy the waters with that analysis in this analysis - but long story short, it's my opinion at the very least, the whole thing was a giant over exaggeration but it had the effect of shutting down Thailand's economy basically, and it had that effect because once these mechanisms were triggered, the counterparts here in Thailand, the counterpart institutions, began doing their thing and locking things down. It's similar here with this OECD thing; it's a Trojan Horse. They have triggered mechanisms that are causing now the banks to do things like say there's a 50,000-baht limit on being able to transfer funds, and as we get into in other videos that I am going to make shortly, there's now talk of you need all this documentation to be able to up that limit. Well that is going to have a terrible effect on Thailand's economy just in terms of velocity of money and liquidity, as I have discussed in other videos. 

Meanwhile, other things have happened like big banks, small banks sometimes, saying hey if you want an affidavit for immigration, you have to go through these hoops, even though immigration itself is not requesting any of that. It's the bank that's doing it, and the upshot is people are becoming very frustrated with Banking and as I have discussed, it could result in many foreigners just throwing up their hands and saying, "hey, I'm not going to mess with this anymore. Basically I am going to take my ball and go home, play somewhere else. I am not interested in playing this game anymore," taking their money and leaving Thailand. And I said to myself, why continue with this where it is becoming increasingly apparent that this is happening? Well much like with COVID, institutionally here in Thailand, there is a delay if you will, there's like a time delay. They are not able to see it yet because quite frankly bureaucrats - both government and corporate bureaucrats - have a kind of set of blinders on as we saw in COVID and cannot see the broader ramifications of the undertakings that they are enforcing, of what they are doing. In the real time, they don't exactly see it. I am not casting aspersions at them. It is just that is the nature of the thing, they don't. We saw this with COVID. When they later did, they reversed the policies, and we saw it go away; that's my hope here is what will ultimately happen. But the point is, in the meantime, OECD and these policies could, which the indirect effect is, folks having less of the desire to bank and do business and travel to Thailand, those folks will then withdraw funds, withdrawal capital from Thailand which will then increasingly make Thailand quite, for lack of a better term "financially shaky" to quote the film Sneakers and will result in Thailand being placed in a detrimental position. And I think the Western powers are trying to benefit from this.

An example comes from dw.com I'll put this on screen dw.com, the article is titled: German welfare state 'can no longer be financed' - Merz. Quoting directly: "German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called for a reform of Germany’s social welfare spending while ruling out tax increases on medium-sized companies. Quote: "The welfare state that we have today can no longer be financed with what we produce in the economy," Merz said in the town of Osnabruck." Okay, so what am I getting at here? What I am saying is, this is not just Germany – which by the way, Germany is the engine of the overall European Union's economy - but other countries we are seeing in the West, again the US has not quite as acutely been going through this but other Western Powers if you will are going through serious economic problems. In the past, Thailand, specifically in the 1997 financial crisis, Western interests including but not limited to actors such as George Soros came out here, the so-called man who broke the British Bank, the man who broke the British pound, came out here and sort of raided Thailand at a time it was already sort of shaky in the currency markets and really Thailand for, there is a great series of books, he calls them the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Jim Rickards wrote; one of them is Currency Wars, one is The Death of Money. In one of those books, and I can't remember which one off the top of my head, he talked about this dynamic. Then in the immediate aftermath of 1997, Thailand was in such a dire position where it needed for an exchange so badly that its exchange rate was way out of whack, but it was letting in lots of individuals here into Thailand, and we saw this in Visa policy. From '97 until 2007, and I came in at the very tail end of this here to Thailand, there was an almost just permissive, like laissez faire Immigration policy. Getting a Retirement Visa was like nothing; it wasn't a big deal. Well it was because they needed the foreign reserve to come in. Now things started to change from '07 going to 2017 which culminated in "Big Joke's" policies regarding - and they have only gotten more stringent since then - regarding folks, looking at their financials and things to make sure they actually had the money because Thailand was able to again become discerning if you will, regarding who was going to be in the country. The point I am making is in the aftermath of '97, in many ways Thailand felt at a policy level or in an economic level, it needed or could not be very discerning about who was in its country and so had to sort of open itself up to folks that it might not otherwise necessarily want to be in their country, because they needed the foreign reserve, because they had been basically put on their back as a nation in '97 as a result of the '97 crisis which was brought about, as I will get to here in a moment, as a result of not only foreign influence and foreign intervention into Thailand's economy to Thailand's detriment, but also foreign, shall we call it neglect or indifference at best, and in some cases firewalling of the problems here, and making Thailand go into all kinds of austerity measures and things under IMF regime, which I will get into in a moment, but also - I'm going to be a little bit critical - I am going to put this up on screen, The Committee to Save the World, that is the Time Magazine cover and we will get to this article here in a moment, where you see Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers as “The Committee to Save the World” so-called, and they talk in there about how when all this was happening, they were essentially convincing - well I'll get to it, let me just quote. This is from The Three Musketeers, time.com archives, so time.com, the article is titled: The Three Musketeers. We will put the cover because I remember this. I read this article when it came out in the '90s as a kid; I was just kind of a nerd like that; I read that at the time. And I read about how this Committee to Save the World sort of firewalled the American economy, and some of the western economies from what was happening in Asia, by basically telling them to do things like austerity, that when we got to the Lehmann crisis some basically a decade later, these same economies weren't willing to do that to themselves. They ended up printing money; they did quantitative easing in order to get their economies out of this stuff, but they told the Asian economies, most notably Thailand, to go through all kinds of very harsh austerity and Thailand had to open herself up to foreigners especially foreign nationals from Western countries that had a disproportionate exchange rate; open it up to Thailand for those folks to just come flooding in. For good or ill. I do understand that those were heady days for expat land but from the standpoint of the Thai people, that was not exactly a positive development.

That said, quoting directly from the Three Musketeers: Quote: "In late night phone calls, and marathon meetings and over bagels, orange juice and quiche, these three men - Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan and Larry Summers - are working to stop what has become a plague of economic panic. Their biggest shield is an astonishingly robust U.S. economy. Growth at year's end was worth 5% - double what economists had expected - and unemployment is at a 28- year low. By fighting off one collapse after another and defending their Economic Policy from political meddling." So these guys were just kind of outdoing what they wanted. But more importantly, they were firewalling the problems in the East and making those countries have to just deal with it, notably Thailand, and not necessarily -  later on, going through, it was sort of a 'do as I say, not as I do' kind of thing or in the inverse of that, when we got to the Lehmann crisis, the so-called Great Financial Crisis in about 2006, '7 and '8, the response was not what they recommended for the Asian countries, which folks here in Thailand are acutely aware of. Quoting further. "The three men have so far protected American growth, making American investors deliriously perhaps delusionally, happy in the process." And let me be clear. I'm not saying what they did was wrong. They were pursuing the national interest okay. But that's the point here, and that's the point of this video is these outside undue influences now here in Thailand, are pursuing their own interests. Thailand needs to pursue her interests in fending this off because I believe this stuff is a Trojan Horse specifically designed to induce a situation very much like 1997 in order to yet again put Thailand on her back or at least on her back foot, so that foreign Western Sovereign Nationals or supranational organizations can benefit thereby. Quoting further: "It has meant some very difficult decisions. In some of the nations devastated by the crisis, there is a growing anti U.S. backlash, and politicians such as Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad complained that Rubin, Greenspan and Summers - and their henchman at the International Monetary Fund - have turned nations like Malaysia and Russia into leper colonies by isolating them from global capital and making life hellish in order to protect U.S. growth."

So again this was the aftermath of the crisis. Now what triggered it? Going over here to Wikipedia, wikipedia.org. 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis gripped much of East and Southeast Asia during the late 1990s. This crisis began in Thailand in July 1997 before spreading to several other countries with a ripple effect raising fears of worldwide economic meltdown due to financial contagion. However, the recovery in 1998 - 1999 was rapid, and worries of a meltdown quickly subsided.” Now to some extent the so-called Committee to Save the World I think did some good things. They isolated it but they isolated it much as the Malaysian Prime Minister pointed out, it was like yeah, but it was sort of like quarantining somebody and just being like sorry, you have got to go through hellishness but to save us. I mean, yeah, we get it. You had to do what you had to do.

In this situation here presently we can avoid this by doing a U-turn on all this OECD stuff and not undermining the confidence in Thailand's banking system to begin with which could thereby trigger the same type of economic series of events from occurring again. That said, quoting further: "Originating in Thailand where it was known as the Tom Yung Kung crisis on 2nd July, it followed the financial collapse of the Thai baht after the Government was forced to float the baht due to lack of foreign currency to support its currency peg to the US dollar. Capital flight ensued almost immediately" - now that is the key point. Capital flight is what caused it to metastasize instantaneously. What is happening with these OECD policies that are now sort of propagating or trickling down through the system and we are seeing having an impact most acutely right now on the expat community but also Thais are seeing this stuff as well, is we could see Capital flight, and capital flight is what triggered the crisis before. Quoting further: "Capital flight ensued almost immediately, beginning an international chain reaction. At the time, Thailand had acquired a burden of foreign debt. As the crisis spread, other Southeast Asian countries and later Japan and South Korea, saw slumping currencies." Again, I'm not saying this stuff is exactly the same, but what it led to is that Capital flight, and then Thailand was put on its back and then in came for lack of a better term, the vultures and different types of vultures came in in different ways. One of the things we saw in the immediate aftermath of this is there were a couple of allowances of foreign institutions and nationals to own land in Thailand. If you go back and look at the turn of the millennium going in '98, '99, 2000, the few instances you see in Thailand of foreign land ownership were instigated in the aftermath of this crisis when the IMF was imposing austerity or “recommending” austerity onto Thailand and then Thailand had to respond by doing things that frankly she otherwise might not have done. That's what's worrying me here. Again, this is being used as a Trojan Horse to undermine the confidence in the banking system, which could then trigger Capital flight, which could then put Thailand in a position not unlike the situation in '97 where people are then upset if you will, about the system here in Thailand and it results in Thailand being put back on her back economically and therefore basically "easy pickings" for foreign interests to come in here and sort of plunder the place. I'm seriously concerned about this. That said, quoting further: "The economic crisis also led to a political upheaval most notably culminating in the resignations of President Suharto in Indonesia, and Prime Minister General Chavalit Yongchaiyuth in Thailand. There was a general rise in anti-western sentiment with George Soros and the IMF in particular singled out as targets of criticism. Heavy U.S. investment ended replaced by mostly European investment" 

Now what we have seen in the last 20 odd years here in Thailand is increasing co-operation between the United States and Thailand as well as other countries, but to some extent European interests have been somewhat on the wane here and I am starting to wonder if some of these interests are trying to spur their ability to "invest" and I use that term in quotes because when Thailand was on her back in the aftermath of the '97 financial crisis, this "so-called" investment, like buying land that could not otherwise have been bought prior to these basically terms being imposed upon Thailand under the IMF, there was a reason that there was anti-western sentiment and anti-IMF sentiment because those institutions and those interests were viewed as praying upon Thailand in the aftermath of that economic situation. 

 

And again my point here is again, Europe was sort of unduly enriched as a result of this; the German Chancellor has just said, "hey we can't fund our welfare state". That is a big statement from that guy, okay. That's a huge statement actually. Clearly there are economic problems at least in Western Europe, okay. What has been their go-to move historically? It's colonialism or neo-colonialist practices where they extract wealth from other places and bring it back home. Now this tactic, they've seen this work in '97. Now the OECD, which is primarily a European construct, which the Americans have explicitly rejected; our President Thank God said, "yeah no, that's a threat to national sovereignty, and it's extraterritorial; we are not interested in that." But here's Thailand that is still "exploring" this - at least under this current government - and we are sort of being subjected to this over here. And it looks to me like beyond the issues associated with the liberties, associated with Thai liberty, it's also the issue of is this a Trojan Horse designed to have the indirect effect of collapsing confidence in Thailand's banking sector, thereby causing the foreign community to start pulling their money out and going elsewhere, and thereby causing a metastasization effect if you will, in confidence in the economy here in Thailand, which will then leave Thailand vulnerable to the same European interests that said OECD was such a great idea to begin with. And again, if you go back and look, frankly since we saw this government and all of their WEF thoughts and desires, again it hasn't been things that have been really good for Thailand. I go back to the Digital Wallet which by the way is currently still under consideration by the Courts here which could result in a "nuclear situation" politically, where we could see dozens if not hundreds of Politicians, Members of Parliament, Senators etc., which I have discussed in other videos, being removed from office because the way that that was put in. But as I said at the time, they wanted a massive increase in national debt in order to implement these digital totalitarian tokens that would track and trace all of our transactions here.

My concentration unfortunately because I just didn't have the vision to be able to see what was happening, my concentration was on the liberty side, was on the privacy side. I was concerned about Digital Money. I didn't see that maybe the entire point was to increase the national debt in order to undermine Thailand's economy and thereby put Thailand on his back so it could be the prey of foreign interests who wanted to unduly feed upon Thailand in much the same way they did in 1997. And this is my genuine concern. I know there are good people in the Government here in Thailand; I know there are people that act in good faith and that are concerned about the national sovereignty of this country and that are concerned about the well-being of the Thai people. And again, as I said at the beginning of this video, I urge everybody who is watching this, this isn't hyperbole. There is a reason I haven't done plugs or talked about any of the usual stuff in this video that I otherwise would. The reason is I view this as, I just had this sort of bolt of lightning moment of clarity, where I said “oh my gosh, this could be an attempt to undermine Thailand's Economy by subterfuge” and the moment it hit me that they could be that they, whatever you want to call “supranational interests” could be trying to place Thailand into another situation similar to 1997. I just said to myself "oh my gosh, this is almost like an emergency level thing insofar as we need to be extremely concerned about this". I know that there are good folks in the Thai government; I know that there are good people acting in good faith for the national interest of Thailand. We need to seriously consider halting this OECD stuff, putting a moratorium on this so we can re-examine whether or not this is good for Thailand because if these trends continue, I am seriously concerned we could end up in a 1997 type of situation, something similar thereto, and the aftermath will be nothing but devastating for Thailand.