Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing, well we are discussing Banking news here in Thailand, specifically with regard to the Bank of Thailand, Thailand's Central Bank. Let me just jump in here. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Straits Times, that is from straitstimes.com, the article is titled: Thai ex- Central Bank Governors warns of interference in chairman selection. So, for those who are unaware, we're sort of on the precipice of a meeting of the Committee to choose the next Head of the BOT. So let me dig in further. Quoting further: "More than 800 leading Thai economists including four former Governors of the Bank of Thailand, warned on Saturday of political interference in selecting the Central Bank's Board Chairman saying it could damage long-term economic stability." Yeah, I've been a little bit worried about this myself. I've done prior videos talking about how I felt like the kind of conservative posture that the BOT seemed to be taking in these really hectic and uncertain times was probably a wise choice. Under the prevailing circumstances, I continue to think that. Quoting further: "The Government's nomination of former Finance Minister Kittirat na Ranong, a ruling party loyalist and staunch critic of BOT Governor Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput, has sparked concerns over the Central Bank's independence." Yeah, again I have got to be honest with you, and I've done videos on this over the past going on about 14 months now, ever since we saw the sweep in to power of the new coalition if you will, especially with the core coalition member who sort of seems to have the helm over this thing, I've just seen a ton of pushes from what can only really be described in my opinion ‘outside quarters’. What do I mean by that? Quarters outside of Thailand that seem to be pushing hard against our institutions here in Thailand to bring in what I can only describe is what looks like sort of World Economic Forum, Davosian kind of thinking and it is interference in my opinion, and I'm starting to think in fact I have thought this for something of a while now to one degree or another depending on the country you're talking about, the WEF looks to be intentionally trying to interfere in various countries’ national prerogatives regarding all sorts of things not least of which being Central Bank policy. So I find this stuff concerning and it's been a concern increasingly for me since the last again, roughly about since last August when we started seeing major changes because again - there's a lot to be said about the prior Government and I made videos during COVID and all kinds of times, I have been critical in the past of them and there were things to be critical of - I'm not saying that, but the reason I'm kind of like a dog with a bone at this point with regard to a lot of this stuff and I'm making a video contemporaneously with this one talking about the DTV Visa as well, I am increasingly coming to the opinion that all of this was sort of an outside program that is being sort of thrust upon Thailand and those who are sort of attempting to thrust this stuff upon Thailand, do not appear to me to have Thailand's interests at heart. I don't understand why there needs to be a major change for example at the Bank of Thailand. To this point, has there been anything catastrophic that has occurred inside the bank of Thailand that requires essentially what amounts to sort of politicking regarding this position? To my mind it looks like they have objectively tried to maintain a stable currency, tried to maintain a low interest rate; I mean that's reasonable stuff for Central Bankers.

Let me be clear, I don't feel like the one who should be out here as the, and by no stretch of the imagination am I an apologist for Central Banking as a system, but if we're going to have it, I would like to at least see some folks that are going to be into it, they're going to run it reasonably and are going to run it objectively and are not going to inject politics in it because as we've seen in the West, politics being injected into the Financial Monetary and Economic System is essentially Government overreach into the economic system generally, the financial system in many ways since 2008 in a really quite honestly an appalling manner the way in which we have seen these Central Banks intervene and effectively really just warp out the markets, the money markets, everything since 2008. I have had many, many problems but again Thailand didn't see these things because Thailand kind of went through its own cycle of this and dealt with it in its own way following 1997 and in my opinion based on everything I've seen and I've researched, Thailand made the right choices; it made prudent decisions regarding that crisis, and it came out of it better. If anything, I think Thailand is highly inoculated against this financial nonsense, this financial chicanery, this modern monetary theory type thinking that we can just print money, and everything will be fine, and the National Debt doesn't mean anything. That's all nonsense and if anybody has any doubts about the repudiation of this in the West, the prior election, the elections in the United States to my mind I mean just completely repudiate all this nonsense. Clearly, we're going to be changing track from this way of doing things moving forward, at least in the United States. I expect the so-called free world, the Western World will probably follow along; maybe ‘free world’ is too broad of a term because certainly part of the Free World is out here in East Asia. But that said, I think the West is finally going to learn that "hey" and I think they are learning - American in particular - that "hey, we need sound monetary policy; we need sound fiscal policy in terms of public spending”. We haven't seen a lot of that. I think we're going to see a lot of it incoming, I think there's going to be a lot of belt tightening in a Western context, but here in Thailand things have been managed pretty well up to this point. At least they haven't been a complete disaster, and I know that sounds like a low bar, but I mean I give credit where credit is due and those who had to sort of navigate this country and this economic system through the past five years had no mean feat to perform. I mean this was something that really took a lot of doing to get the country through all of this. We've gotten through it now and it looks like at the end zone, we are going to end up getting some sort of political operative that could undermine the currency situation? I mean, how is that good policy? 

That said, quoting further: "Since taking office last year, the Pheu Thai led Government," - I want to come back to that - that said, quoting again: "Since taking office last year, the Pheu Thai Government now under Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, has been at loggerheads with the BOT pressuring the Central Bank to cut interest rates in the Southeast Asian nation and raise its inflation target." Well first of all, I think it's worth noting and pointing out that, let me quote that again, "since taking office last year, the Pheu Thai led Government," - well let's be clear, this is not a Pheu Thai Government that has a majority or some sort of supermajority. They are in a coalition. Their Party themselves represents a minority of overall Parliament that coalition with other parties, in order to create a Cabinet, in order to govern. That said, I don't really see why because they're one piece of a coalition, which doesn't seem like all the rest of that coalition or at least not the parts of it that I understand are completely on board with all of this stuff. Meanwhile, why is it that just because they happen to be one piece of a coalition of an overall Parliament, are they the ones that are getting to dictate who is going to sit on this Committee, who is going to be the Chairman? And as we will get to here in a minute, this Committee is supposed to be independent to begin with, so what are we even talking about? That said, quoting further: "Should the BOT "carry out the wishes of the political group, then it would tarnish the credibility of the Central Bank which must maintain a strong economic stability for the country in the long term," the 830 economists said in a statement." And I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article for more detail. Again, that comes from straitstimes.com and it's coming from Reuters via straitstimes.com. 

That said, quoting further, and this is really a key point here: "The independent committee selecting the Board Chairman meets on Monday after delaying its decision this week, saying it needed more time to "consider all aspects of information" amid the tension between the Central Bank and the Government." Again, I find this deeply concerning because quite honestly, we dug ourselves out of a hole from what quite frankly a lot of the political players “within” this Government or I should say within the "core coalition" of this Government got us into some 10 years ago or over 10 years ago when the country was really flat on its broke because it had to deal with prior spending initiatives and it caused problems. In other countries, they didn't get their fiscal house in order.

This is what has happened over the course of the last, since 2008, just a brief summation. Those countries in the West did not get their houses in order in terms of fiscal policy. They just kept spending and spending, deficit spending, all sorts of nonsense, quantitative easing - another word for money printing - they never got their houses in order, and they used monetary policy or in my opinion, bad monetary policy to prop up bad fiscal responsibility. Thailand does not have these problems so why are we creating them? Why would we want problems to bleed over into our monetary system? As I discussed when this same Government pushed Digital Money, which isn't really money, and wanted the country to go into half a trillion baht in debt to create this system, which no one can ever explain to me where the half a trillion Baht went because nobody ever got any money they just got Digital Tokens or some other magic bean thing that this Government came up with, again there seems to be a push to get in and mess with Thailand's monetary system and we have seen, how do you want to put it, predicates to this. We've seen sort of premonitions of this if you will in the American system some three or four years ago when we saw somebody who was a literal avowed Communist, almost became the Comptroller General of the United States currency; we also saw Ms. Lael Brainard who's like a modern monetary theorist kind of person who was trying real hard to take over Jerome Powell's post which again I'm not the biggest fan of Central Bankers but as far as it goes, it looks to me like Jerome Powell at least has the interest of the nation state of the United States of America in his sort of crosshairs, that is sort of within his priority set and he seems to be trying to maintain some level of credibility on one level, but also maintain basically American sovereignty when it comes to her monetary policies, what it looks like to me. And it looks like to me these same forces that were moving against that in America, may be moving here in Thailand to try and make kind of the same moves here in the Thai system and I fear it could be disastrous because frankly, if we ended up with Lael Brainard over Jerome Powell some two years back or whatever it was, we would be in a disastrous position right now, in the United States at least. I think the dollar would be in a terrible place and we would have to be dealing with that person for two more years and God knows what that would look like.

So again, I'm concerned about this because I've seen prior again premonitions of this if you will, foreboding if you will, of this foreshadowing if you will in the United States and now I am seeing the same types of moves over here and I find it very, very concerning. That said, quoting further: "The Board Chairman is not involved in rate decisions but heads the panel that chooses policy committee members." So again, this person has a significant amount of power insofar as they're going to be the ones that will pick people who can set very direct policy that can have a very significant impact on Thailand’s monetary system and thereby her economy. That said, quoting further: "The chair will also be involved in selecting the next Bank of Thailand Governor when Sethaput's term ends in September 2025." That's significant. Quoting further: "There are two other candidates for the role - a former permanent Secretary of Energy and a former University Dean - who were nominated by BOT. Thai law allows the Government to nominate one candidate for every two Central Bank nominees. Once the seven-member selection committee picks a Chairman, its decision requires the approval of the Finance Minister, the Cabinet and Thailand's King." Again, from Reuters, quoting. 

That said, again going back to this issue though is the fact that look I don't know the whys and wherefores and all the little peccadillos and everything having to do with all the nominees. The only reason I'm making this video is point out the generally speaking this is an independent entity here in Thailand that is not generally supposed to be subject to a bunch of political pressure, and I hope we don't see a bunch of political pressure that could be detrimental to Thailand's economy in the long term.