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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Double Speak, Digital Money and the state of the Thai economy. Let me just dig in. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Thai Economy to grow 2.7%, beat forecast, Paetongtarn says. So this is the PM, the Thai Prime Minister. Meanwhile, I thought we were in the economic doldrums out here and everything was terrible and that was why we had to go over to this digital money. But now it's looking like that's not the case, and I can't wait for the next narrative lily pad to pop up where they say: “and oh by the way, it's all because we gave you all this stimulus," which really is not in my mind the case. One of the reasons I'm so upset about everything that's happened in roughly the past 14 months - especially with regard to the economic narrative that's being pushed among these neo-Keynsian modern monetary theorists - I don't even know what their economic thinking is but it's nonsensical; it's the standard push money, give out "stimulus" and that is the end all be all to every economic question.

Well we're seeing in the West exactly what that type of policy hath wrought and quite honestly we saw it frankly in the aftermath of '97 to a certain extent, but more to the point we saw it, quite frankly when the military government took over here and had to go ahead and right the ship economically for all of the, in my opinion 'pie in the sky' economic plans like the rice pledging scheme etc. that that prior government had come up with and effectively I mean, really this isn’t a hyperbolic statement, Thailand was effectively bankrupt for about a moment back in roughly about 2014. I say that, again not hyperbolically, literally after Prayut took over, I think one of the first things he did was wrote the check to the farmers to sort of get everything straight with regard to the  finances back to the farmers that resulted in the conflict that arose with the so-called rice pledging scheme and then we were sort of on our back and we had to rebuild over 10 years and then when that 10 years finally ends, now we have got all these people showing back up, telling us we have got to do the same stuff that put us in to that terrible position to begin with. I would argue again, in any kind of argument that stimulus is what brought on this turnaround, the economics just aren't there. Thailand has been turning around for roughly 2 years now. It has been driven by a number of things but some things like the creative delisting of Cannabis as a narcotic for example, the legalization of Cannabis, in my opinion has led to Thailand having one of the few commercial retail real estate sectors probably in the world that is still at least somewhat vibrant. Meanwhile, Thailand got her act together; we got on it; we built this thing back up. None of this is coming from stimulus or any of this other nonsense that's being spewed out quite frankly probably only for another couple of fortnights now at this point from the West, although when Trump comes in, he's not averse to printing money and spending it as well as we saw in 2020. So again, I don't know where this ends but again this gas lighting in the narrative really needs to end because at the end of the day, if anything has been proven over the past let's call it 25, 35 years let's take it back to 1997, so we're almost at roughly 30 years now. Look since '97, Thailand has made a lot of really good moves, and they have done things that are financially, fiscally and monetarily prudent and every time they don't, it all seems to emanate from one specific sector by the way. Every time as a country we sort of veer away from that and get into economic problems, and I just don't see why we continue veering off of what is working. What's clearly working here in Thailand is everybody just got back to work. They shut down the economy for nearly 3 years. Opening that back up was a pretty big deal but letting the Thai system, the natural economy do things like attract tourists; letting the natural economy create a new system like the Cannabis business. Again, all of these are net benefits, but what you're going to hear from the so-called technocratic elite is that "oh it all came from stimulus and monetary policy" and this kind of nonsense. I don't think anything could be further from the truth. 

That said, quoting again: Thai economy to grow 2.7%, beat forecast, Paetongtarn says. Quote: "Thailand's economy is expected to grow 2.7% this year, helped by an anticipated annual rise of 28% foreign visitors to 36 million, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said on Thursday. Southeast Asia's second-largest economy will grow more than forecast in 2025." Again, what was it, 3 months ago, not even that, 2 months ago, 6/8 weeks ago, we were hearing from this same person that the sky was falling and that was why we needed the Digital Wallet and we had to have a totalitarian surveillance grid imposed upon us in order to get us away from this terrible economic blight that we were heading into. Then in the same breath, now they're turning around and saying, "well actually, everything is looking quite good." Well which is it? You want the benefit of being able to say "hey while we've been running things, the economy's been good but we tried to run it into the ground by creating Digital Tokens that would put the country into an extra 10% debt to GDP ratio and probably drive us off a cliff, but no, no, no, that didn't happen and things are still hunky-dory but you have got to give us credit for that too!" That's nonsense. Quoting further: "Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy will grow more than forecast in 2025 and the Government will accelerate investment spending..." - see again, stay out of it. I almost wish, it's just like, "investment spending of more than 960 billion baht (that is US $27.74 billion)" - how about you just give it back to us? That would be better in my opinion than you guys going out and doing all of this stuff. Honestly, I'm having almost nightmare visions of 2013 and '14 where Thailand sort of teetered on the brink with bankruptcy because again these pie in the sky government investment schemes, etc., etc., and it all came to what? Quoting further: "The economy is in the recovery phase.." - again what was it? Like 2 months ago we were headed into a brick wall or off a cliff and now we're in the recovery phase? And again I don't want to hear the narrative that somehow the stimulus is what did it okay, because clearly that's not the case. The stimulus isn't bringing in the foreign tourists; the stimulus isn't selling the exports. Okay yeah, some Thais got some relief and I think it was probably much appreciated by the folks who got it, but this notion that that has somehow driven the economy is ludicrous. Meanwhile, as I discussed it at the time, simply giving people back their own money, to go buy stuff they would have bought anyway, all it does is create new taxable events and new ways to say that you saved the economy, when in reality nothing happened. No new goods and services were created as a result of that money being injected into the economy so therefore basically, all that's going to happen is inflation. That said, quoting further: "The economy is in the recovery phase," Ms. Paetongtarn said. "In each quarter, we have done better than expected." Really? Tell that to yourself 2 months ago. Quoting further: "Thailand's economy grew 3% in the July - September quarter annually.." Wait, what? You just literally told us in July through September, how terrible everything was and therefore we needed the Digital Wallet, and therefore we needed to be under constant surveillance, and therefore we needed to add our debt to GDP ratio, we needed to bump it up by another 10% and yet now you are telling us that from July to September everything was great? Quoting further: "..the fastest pace in 2 years and beating expectations." Again, all of this rosy language, where was this - I kind of feel like that line from, what's that line from that movie the Wedding Singer? Where he says, "once again, things that could have been brought to my attention yesterday!" You know when he gets mad it's like this. You were telling us how terrible everything was in this exact quarter, the exact quarter of July - September, you told us everything was terrible; dogs and cats living together; the sky is falling; we have to have digital money, it has to track and trace everything we do and we have to go into tremendous amount of national debt for it notwithstanding the fact we didn't actually get money back, we just went into debt and got these magic bean tokens or whatever they were, but during that exact quarter, now you're saying everything was blissful and you're trying to take credit for it? Quoting further: "But officials and analysts expect increased challenges next year," - well yeah, because the disaster is clearly looming that they need to save us from. It's nonsense, it's nonsense. Quoting further: "..including the fallout from trade wars." Oooo! Trade wars! Now we have got a new Boogeyman. Trump, the Orange Man and his Trade War, brother Trump - Brother loves Travel and Salvation Show; Brother Trump's Travel and Trade War Show. That's going to be the new Boogeyman that you can try to convince us to go into a ton of national debt for something that all it's going to do is surveil us and give us no extra value? Is this the next Boogeyman? Because by the way, the last time you told us everything was horrible, it turns out it was great. So you can kind of see where I have some issues believing what you're saying. Quoting further: "Ms Paetongtarn said the Government would seek support measures if the United States took action on countries with which it has trade deficits, which would include Thailand and China." Well, okay I mean again what is that? Thailand's had a trade deficit with the United States for quite a long time. It's called the Triffin Dilemma, Triffin's Dilemma. When you're the country that has the reserve currency, this is how it always goes. You always maintain trade deficits with everybody else you trade with because what you're trading effectively is your own currency and what they are giving you is goods and services in exchange. This has been going on for how long? I don't see where it's an excuse to make any major policy changes. I definitely fail to see where it's an excuse to go after these hair brained, pie in the sky economic boondoggles that do nothing but tie this country into further debt and we really see no great benefit out of it as a result of it. Then meanwhile look, Thailand and the USA, Thailand is the United States' oldest ally in Asia. The Treaty of Amity goes back 190 years, our diplomatic relationship goes back 200. I'm pretty sure we can deal with some trade deficits. We don't need a bunch of scare-mongering and nonsense talk to get us to go back into some kind of Digital Money or whatever it is they want us to do, go into a bunch of debt and I often wonder, I mean who's getting the benefits and the crust of the pie if you will, when all of this public largesse that comes at the taxpayers’ expense? Who gets all of that? I often wonder that myself.

But that said, at the end of the day I think this is a lot of nonsense talk. I don't think there's a lot of disaster on the horizon. Quite frankly, they said there was a disaster for the past year and the math just was not there. I mean I remember them saying everything was terrible when we saw the biggest spike in consumer spending, we had seen in years in the first quarter in Thailand, this year 2024. So again, they just got done, literally just got done telling us everything's terrible; you have to go on this Digital Money; we have got to track and trace everything because the economics are just so horrible, and now they're saying that that exact quarter that they were telling us that in, actually turned out to be a perfectly good quarter after all.