Transcript of the above video: 

This video is in the vein of some of the videos I have made recently which are highly critical of many of the things that are being rolled out in the banking sector here especially in the aftermath of what I can only describe as a bunch of undue foreign influence during what I refer to as the rump coalition government of last summer, especially I think it was influenced by the World Economic Forum as well as the OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and so-called Development, although the only development I can see is that they want to just develop more totalitarian banking rules; that seems to be all that the OECD is really designed to do at a supranational level. 

And there is more evidence of this to my mind after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Bank of Thailand takes closer look at large cash transactions. I would love to know what the definition of "large" is, and more importantly what the long-term definition of large will be. Remember it's sort of like FBAR requirements in the context of US Tax where yeah, in the '70s when they came up with Foreign Bank Account Reporting they said, "well you need a balance of more than $10,000." Well heck, at that time that was like Pablo Escobar. If you were in an offshore bank with more than $10,000, I mean who really had that at that time? As time went on and they did not create a cost-of-living adjustment associated with that requirement, 10,000 bucks now covers darn near everybody that's outside the United States. And I would argue that notwithstanding what "large" means as of this moment, as time goes on, it looks to me like they are going to be looking at any cash transactions and that brings me to the reason for the title of the video. And yes, it is somewhat hyperbolic but there seems to be this increasing movement of making cash itself presumptively like some kind of illicit thing or illegal thing that, "oh you're transferring a large amount of cash. Oh my God! There's something wrong." And I have watched humanity, and I say "humanity" because I've watched this from both over in the US and then I've seen it slowly but inexorably creep in to Southeast Asia, specifically Thailand. Things like how many times do you see people anywhere, where I see it now with Thais with a 1,000 Baht notes will pull out a marker and test it like there's "oh my gosh", like cash is somehow you have got to be presumptively suspicious of it. Whereas digital transactions, where nothing is occurring, like it's all ethereal, that's viewed as more "legitimate" in some way or at least that is the inference that I've noticed they have been trying to instill in people's heads that, "oh this is hundred-dollar bill. We have got to use a marker and hold it up to the light and do all kinds of things with it." I mean it really is an almost a kind of theatre but as we saw with COVID, they put people through a type of theatre and in a way it kind of brainwashes people and now people sort of think, "well you have got to be worried about cash transactions!" No, there is nothing inherently wrong with using cash and there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting some degree of privacy in one's financial dealings; there's just nothing inherently wrong with that. 

That said, quoting directly from this article: "The Bank of Thailand is tightening oversight of cash transactions by introducing stricter due diligence requirements and clearer verification of the purpose of fund usage in an effort to curb suspicious transactions." Look, I have said this before and I'll say it again. You are messing with the velocity of money here; you are messing with the liquidity in the system. What you're going to end up doing is curbing all transactions. You are going to make it so people don't want to do business in Thailand. One of the things we really had going for ourselves out here was that our banking, once you were in the system, and understand, there was always bureaucracy associated with banking here and paperwork and things, but once you had your account set up, yeah you could transfer money; you could do business easily; you could efficiently move capital around to get done what you needed to. Adding all of this obtuseness and obfuscation and obstacles to getting what you need done, all it's going to do is it is going to hurt the business in Thailand. It's going to hurt the economy, mark my words. Again it's messing with the liquidity here; it's messing with the velocity of money; it's messing with the confidence of outsiders who would otherwise possibly want to bank here. In my mind, this is truly detrimental policy. That said, quoting further: "The regulator is conducting a public hearing on a proposal requiring financial institutions to ensure customers are present or have had their identities verified before conducting cash transactions." Of what level? And by the way, I love it when they have these hearings, then they just kind of don't listen to anybody on and just do whatever they wanted to do in the first place. So what's the mechanism of these hearings and is there a mechanism to not do this? Because here is me making my sort of thoughts on this public during this hearing time, we're messing with the velocity of money; we're messing with the liquidity of Thailand; we're messing with the economy if we continue down this road. And it's being brought in by who? Again, I have talked about this in the past. There is a certain point - and I know that in the past Thailand had to be very cognizant of foreign notions and needed to adapt herself in certain ways to comport with the sort of international consensus on how things work - that era is over. That era is at an end. The East is on the rise. Thailand is one of the most dynamic nations on the face of the planet. It has not been colonized; it was not subverted by communism; it has held its own as a sovereign autonomous nation that makes its own policies, and she needs to continue to do that. And I hope to God that folks see the error and folly that this road could take us down. Efficient, transparent, but not overly, for lack of a better term, totalitarian banking, would be a better way to go. It's going to lead to more people wanting to do business here. That said, quoting further: "The draft rules also mandate the monitoring, detection, and examination of abnormal transactions," - what does that mean? Some arbitrary and capricious level that can just be applied to anything at will, and then people see their accounts frozen for no reason that they can comprehend? Again, these are not things that are conducive to a dynamic economy. This is the kind of crap they pull in Soviet Systems. Quoting further: "to prevent the facilitation of illegal activities." Again, we have law enforcement for that. When did the banks become law enforcement, and when did cash in and of itself and usage thereof, become an inference or did it become inferred that something illegal is even happening? Quoting further: "and to strengthen the stability of the financial system. The public hearing runs from February 10-24." 

I hope anybody that's eligible to go to that, Thais, whoever, will make their voices heard. I'm hoping my voice is being heard as much as it can be on this topic. I don't think this is good for the country. People can sit around and say, "oh you just want to be super private in your transactions." Yeah, I actually do. That in and of itself I think is a good thing. But overall, I think this will have ramifications for the broader economy and those ramifications are not going to be positive and will not have a positive effect, in my opinion, on the Kingdom of Thailand.