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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing economics here in Thailand. This is something I have sort of backed into on this channel lo this past few months especially as we have been talking about things like this discussion of Digital Money which I don't know how you call it money but whatever; not going to go too far down that rabbit hole in this particular video. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Thai Examiner, that is thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Srettha's crisis is not just an economic one, it is a '3D debt crisis' that is strangling GDP growth.  Now a couple of things here. As per usual Thai Examiner goes into great depth and I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail. Just to start off, understanding terminology is often the key to understanding how to deal with either a dialectic or any other kind of argument when trying to do analysis on what is going on in the world. So this notion of "strangling GDP growth rate, 3D debt crisis", while on their face, the terms are not particularly disingenuous, there is a lot of nuance here and there are multiple ways to understand these terms that when you do understand them from a different perspective, you realize that quite honestly Thailand has not got a lot of problems or at least does not have the problems that the "pearl clutching’ grasping not grasping but sort of gasping for  sort of again "clutching pearls" and saying "oh Thailand needs to worry about its economy, Thailand needs to do this to change that and change this so we get a better, this and that," these are the things that bug me a lot. It seems to me that especially since 2020 and I am just going to say this, because people have sort of said to me, "Ben you are very critical of COVID policies but then you weren't particularly critical of Thailand". Well yeah I was. If you go back and watch the videos, in the moment, I sort of said "hey what are we doing here? What are we doing there?" That said, my overarching belief in all of this was this was a foreign notion that was foisted on to Thailand at the beginning of 2020. And I have got to be honest with you, a lot of this economic, what I only can describe is 'gobbledygook' that we are seeing regarding Thailand's problems and this and that, at least economically, again I view this as a lot of foreign nonsense quite honestly. Let me explain a little further. Again, the article is titled: Srettha's crisis is not an economic one, it is a "3D debt crisis" that is strangling GDP growth, Thai Examiner, thaiexaminer.com. Quoting directly: "Thailand's economy is caught in a trap where it cannot generate the level of income and profit margins to increase labour pay levels to make ends meet, something which in the last decade or so has driven a large number of workers into chronic, persistent and ultimately more expensive debt." Again strictly speaking not true. But let's go back and look at why especially the past 3 years. The economy was completely shut down. This isn't the workers’ fault; this isn't Thailand's fault, it is circumstance, it is what it is. And I love how this is framed now. The sort of narrative-makers if you want to call it that, they came out with the COVID narrative which resulted in quite honestly economic catastrophe and now "oh they have got the solution for us don't they?" Digital money that tracks and traces us everywhere we go and now Thailand needs to do something about her GDP, and I will get to GDP here in a minute. Quoting further: "Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin's Government has turned its attention to the emerging "3D debt crisis” that the Kingdom is facing in 2024, as debt levels rise in the public and private sectors as well as households with more and more working people being forced out of the regular banking system to borrow from informal lenders." Okay first off, let's talk about this. "Debt levels rise in public and private sectors". Well if anybody is responsible for debt levels rising in the public sector it would be the Prime Minister and the Government, okay. Now with regard to debt levels in the private sector I think we can lay some of the problems or some of the, I hate to use the word 'blame' but let's use the word responsibility for Thai, normal Thai people, myself included needing to possibly use further debt because ‘the economy was shut down for 3 years’. And "forced out of regular banking system to borrow from informal lenders." Well why not put some rules on the banking sector to lend to those folks? Quoting further: "The crisis is not only a key factor in the country's retarded GDP growth but is now threatening the country's soundly financed banking system as revolving debt clogs up its arteries." Bankers create debt; bankers create debt. If the banking system has a debt problem, that is their problem. If you say there is an institutional medical problem and you are saying "oh well the doctors say that people need to pay them more so they can go fix it or whatever," well that is doctors' job. That's what they are supposed to be doing, that's a doctor's problem. Nobody sits around and says "oh there are too many laws; all these lawyers running around need to do something about these laws!" Well that is kind of what lawyers do. When they are lawyers, they have to deal with new laws and oftentimes when they become legislators they create new laws, it's just sort of what they do. I am sorry, I can't be overly sympathetic to debt clogging up the arteries of the banking system that created the debt in the first place. 

So let's talk about this retarded GDP growth and actually let's talk about GDP specifically. And I have to give a shout out here, I have got to tip the hat big time to a guy named Alasdair MacLeod over there, I believe he is in the UK, and I have been watching him for years talk on YouTube and things. He brought up something that opened my eyes years ago. He said GDP itself is a creation of the banking industry because it only measures in bank credit; that's its metric. GDP’s metric is Bank credit so every time they talk about GDP, it is like the phenomenon of the fish not being able to see the water that it's in. It is so inextricably linked to the water and its surroundings, a fish can't understand that there's something called water that it's sort of swimming in. Those analyzing GDP purely from a GDP-centric perspective, are only going to ever see GDP. Meanwhile, when they talk about these informal lenders, and I do agree that is an issue and I am very heartened to see that this present Government feels that there needs to be some law enforcement activities perhaps or maybe some policy making activities that need to be undertaken in order to deal with the informal lending situation; that is a totally different issue. But I hate this when outsiders especially start looking at Thailand and say "oh your GDP growth, and notice it is GDP growth it's not GDP is down, instead it is not growing fast enough for banking expectations or whatever. But meanwhile it never seems to take into account that there is an entire informal economy here in Thailand that is not at all driven by Bank credit exclusively, that exists in its own right. And thank God it does because if you look at the history of Thailand, from 1997 when that crash occurred, quite honestly the buffer that saved the real people in the country was the informal economy. Now I wasn't here in '97 but I came here around 2008 and I actually sort of saw this in action sort of the latter half of the post 20 years 1997 and you could visibly see it. It was the informal economy, in tandem in certain ways with the formal economy the GDP-metric economy that ultimately resulted in Thailand getting back on her feet and moving forward and moving to the point we are at now where in my opinion Thailand is quite strong. Yet again I reiterate, yes if you tabulate Thailand's economic activity purely from the perspective or I should say exclusively from the perspective of Bank credit, then yeah, it may not look quite as good as again a lot of financial people may want it to look in terms of growth. But please, point to me another jurisdiction on this planet that has some kind of booming growth that isn't a massively developing economy, okay? This is another one that is a massive misnomer. They always come in and sort of, I am not really picking on a Thai Examiner here by the way, I see this all the time - Bangkok Post, other places, other news outlets and internationally – Bloomberg etc., Nikkei always talks about Thailand, "they have slower economic growth than their neighbors," than what? Laos? I mean when you are starting from a lower point, there is nowhere to go but up; it is going to be faster. I mean yeah Myanmar, I remember one time I read an article, one of the most absurd things I ever read, it was some decade ago or said well Myanmar's growth is set to outpace by orders of magnitudes to Thailand's. It is like, when you start from zero yeah. Thailand is a massively sophisticated economy. We have got light manufacturing, heavy manufacturing, I will get into that in a minute; our infrastructure is going through the roof and you are saying we have got ‘retarded GDP growth’. Okay, ‘retarded’ compared to what? And this is the other thing Thailand is not an economy that has based the entirety of their economy on financialization. Thailand makes things; Thailand is concentrated on light manufacturing, heavy manufacturing, tourism which does provide a service, it's a major service; infrastructure growth, agriculture. These are the things Thailand has concentrated on, real sorry if a lot of that is in the informal economy and it doesn't give the "GDP" that everybody wants to see but again they only measuring those metrics in terms of bank credit, not goods and services. When you measure in terms of goods and services, the entirety of Thailand's economy, I mean we are going from strength to strength. Truly, strength to strength. Sorry I get a little tongue tied when I say that. But yeah this is not a developing country anymore. I think there was a time you could still say that. These days Thailand is pretty well developed. Now there is more development to be had and we are definitely seeing it in places like the Eastern Economic Corridor, down south as well and even up north up in Chiang Mai, Esan i's doing quite well these days. Now is it as good as we would like? Not really. Do you know why? We had our economy shut down for 3 years so we were starting on our back foot but we were doing pretty good to show any kind of growth coming off of the last 4 years. My opinion, it is pretty darn good. And then when you take into consideration that GDP itself is something of a warped metric, I fail to see where Thailand is falling short. And again, there is nothing wrong with the nations that surround Thailand and there is nothing wrong with any of the countries in ASEAN. They each have their own way of doing things but that said Thailand has had a developed economy and has been much more of a developed nation for decades longer than some of these jurisdictions. So to compare Thailand to some of these other jurisdictions in Southeast Asia and to believe that that is some kind of useful comparison, that is like comparing apples and bowling balls; it is just not the same thing. And I am really optimistic actually about Thailand and I am really happy to see that this incoming Government has done some things to further doing what Thailand does best which is creating value in the form of goods and services. The new Prime Minister has gone out, he has found new investors that supposedly we are going to see 300 billion Baht invested in the tech sector; that is great. That takes Thailand into the future. Technological exchanges that kind of thing, not just good old fashioned heavy manufacturing, light manufacturing although keep those things. I am here to tell you that as an American who watched manufacturing in my country be offshored pretty much over the whole of my life, I am here to tell you manufacturing is the backbone of a strong economy, a truly strong economy not an economy that meets expectations of a bunch of financial wonks out there, a truly strong economy. A strong economy that creates value, creates goods and services and it helps the Thai people do better.

Now finally on this whole notion of “well Thais are very in debt”. I kind of did a deep dive on that and yes individual debt in Thailand is rather substantial. That said, unlike a lot of other places in this world and I can imagine why this rankles banking folks, it is primarily unsecured credit; it is not collateralized by things like someone's house, which when you foreclose on someone's house it has a devastating impact on them on a human level. No, unsecured credit well at the end of the day credit is a two-way street. The creditor is taking a certain amount of risk and I am not in favor of people defaulting intentionally on their loans or anything like that, that is not what I am saying, but at the end of the day let's look at this for what it is. Creditors take risks when they loan money; debtors take a certain amount of risk when they take it on. Now both folks try to keep their end of their agreement but if things happen and a default occurs, that is part of the inherent risk a creditor takes. Am I in favour of a bunch of people defaulting on them? No, do not take this for what it is not. That said, in terms of Thailand's economic strength, the fact that this is mostly unsecured debt, is actually better for the country in the long run in my opinion, than if it were the other way around. So that said, again I am not some economic guru by any stretch of the imagination, I have sort of a basic understanding of how this stuff works but I like to think that common sense oftentimes prevails and under present circumstances, I have a lot of optimism for Thailand in terms of economics; I think she's going to do great moving forward and I am really tired of these false comparisons and these metrics that are rolled out there that most people, lay people when they initially read them are like "oh my gosh that's a stark problem, Thailand's economy is down!" Well no, part of Thailand's economy, its financialized economy, its economy which is sort of within the rubric of bank credit, it may be a little more stagnant than it otherwise would be. Again three years of economic shutdown will do that to you. That said, that is not a full and accurate assessment of the overall economy here in the Kingdom of Thailand.