Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggest, we are discussing conscientious Central Banker. What are we talking about here? Well, I know there are some that like to burn me in the comments when I talk about economics and tell me that I don't know the difference between deflation and disinflation and all of this good stuff. Look, I've never claimed to be any kind of major expert in economics but I also am of the opinion that a bunch of people who get together and have their own little special language and just say they are economists, I have a kind of an issue where they are running around telling other people that they can't have a thought on how economic works because you're not in their little club or whatever. So long story short, I'm going to talk about this stuff. I find it interesting. I don't think I'm right all the time. I think that there are things I get wrong but yeah, I do watch international economics. I've lived outside of my country of birth for over 17 years and now I live in another country that I really worry about greatly, making economic mistakes especially at such a precarious time in terms of geopolitics and in terms of international trade, international economics. It is just something that I think is worth talking about.

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: All eyes on Thai Baht. Just for some in context here, the Thai Baht is strengthening greatly. Meanwhile the US Central Bank has cut interest rates; there's calls for the Thai Central Bank to do the same thing, but honestly what we are talking about here is what it's my understanding is monetarism and Keynesianism basically that the Government and the Central Bank should operate using their monetary powers and using some of their fiscal powers to essentially intervene in the economy in order to "prop it up". I have discussed this in the context of the so-called digital wallet program that they talked have about over the course of the last roughly nine months going on a year now that Thailand is in all these economic straits and has all these problems and therefore we need to initiate these sort of Keynesian type interventions or monetarist type interventions by cutting the interest rate and thereby sort of easing, basically printing money, weakening the currency, because the US is weakening their currency to try and create some sort of stimulus; they're also trying to prop up their own export market. Trump is probably a fan of a weak dollar as well; during his administration that seemed to be the order of the day. Thailand kind of navigated through that all right, I suspect we can again. But that said, there seems to me this ongoing call for the Central Bank to step in and intervene. I personally think that intervention of this type is what got us to this point. It's what brought, especially in the West, and again Thailand is very much a part of East Asia especially economically, but unlike virtually any other country in East Asia, maybe with a little bit of exception of the Philippines, but Thailand and in a very different way from the Philippines, is very influenced or has been influenced at least paradigmatically by Western thought especially in terms of economics, but at the same time maintaining her own paradigm, her own interests or pursuing her own interests I should say, notwithstanding the fact that that doing so might contravene notions from Western economic thinking. At the end of the day, Thailand does what's best for Thailand. It’s one of the reasons I like living here. I didn't like living in a country that I could never figure out what was in the national interest from anything that they did. I enjoy living in a country that strictly adheres to or pursues the national interest. 

That said, there seem to be those again and I've talked about this, the Digital Wallet. They were trying to create this sort of ongoing narrative if you will that Thailand has this massive economic problem. Yes there are people that could use some relief; yes there are people that could use some help, but as we have discussed in prior videos, quarter one of this year was staggering.  Coming off of the high season, I mean we were seeing booms. It was like up 7%. I think in the past I've said near 10% - I thought it was 9.6% - I believe it was 6.9% increase in consumer spending. I mean going into the first quarter of 2024 that is a staggeringly good thing and I think the rest of the world saw that. Quite frankly I think Western interests are looking at Thailand as sort of almost like a plump turkey or something to shoot and to get something out of Thailand. I remember reading an article years and years ago, I believe it was called Committee to Save the World; it was in Time Magazine. The cover had, in fact, we'll try to throw up the cover of Time Magazine. It had if I recall, Greenspan on it, Larry Summers was on it and Reuben the Treasury Secretary. But in that article, they talked about when the Asian financial crisis broke out, how the Central Bankers in America got on the phone and did some things to sort of firewall it, to keep it from coming in, particularly to the American economy. I bring this up because again, and we saw in the ‘90s here in Thailand how Western influences can have a detrimental impact on Thailand and then that capital then flows out to the Western powers, basically to the Western sort of financial powers if you will. None of this to the benefit of Thailand, and what worries me right now is that outside influences are trying to pressure Thailand through various means to do things economically, monetarily that may not be in her interest.

So that being said, going back to this article that made me think of making this video, again Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: All eyes on Thai Baht. Quoting directly: “While Bank of Thailand Governor Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput said on Friday it is monitoring the situation, he also noted lower rates would not alleviate the country's debt problem and the MPC doesn't need to hold off-cycle meetings to address this issue.” So basically, the Central Bank here in Thailand, the Bank of Thailand, one of their committees that deals with these matters doesn't need to have a special meeting. That is what's being said here. Everybody is running around like their hair is on fire trying to make a big deal. I also think maybe certain political actors are trying to show that they can get some sort of results and they may be pressuring the Central Bank to make some moves with regard to weakening the Baht and thereby sort of freeing up, it's like a sugar high when you print money effectively, when you quantitatively ease, whatever you want to call it. Basically, you create money without concomitant value associated with it. When you do it, you create sort of an initial sugar high. We saw this in the aftermath of stimulus in America – so-called stimmy cheques - where people ran around and the economy really fired up and money started moving; it's called velocity of money. The money started moving around through the system. This creates a sort of initial wealth effect as everybody sees all this money moving around and they say "okay everything's going all right." The problem is you don't create anytime concomitant value, the result is you just inflated the currency which leads to problems down the road. Lower purchasing power of that currency, problems with inflation etc.

So in my opinion, I think it's very conscientious right now to just sort of take for lack of a better term, sort of a middle of the road approach, and just try to navigate Thailand through what's going to be some tumultuous International economic events I think over the course of the upcoming year as we see things really pretty radically evolve I expect in the West, especially Western financial systems. It is my understanding that they are changing over from LIBOR to SOFR - so S O F R from L I B O R - so these are the ways in which in the past you would, basically the City of London dealt with American sort of Central Bank matters and how the Bank in the United States, the FED, interacted with Europe primarily and the rest of the world. These mechanisms are changing pretty wildly coming at the beginning of October - which is this flip over to the next fiscal year - these are going to have an impact overall, long term and Thailand's going to have to navigate between these two things. Meanwhile as I've discussed in other videos, Thailand is also kind of having to balance between the OECD and the BRICS trying to decide what's best for Thailand and which way to go with regard to that. 

Look long story short, there's a whole lot of chaos out there. There's a lot of unknown unknowns, known unknowns, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, there are many things in the economy that are going to be very difficult to predict and I think it's a good idea and it's very conscientious on the part of a Central Banker right now, to just be prudent rather than making moves that can have detrimental unintended consequences down the road.