Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing, well the surge in the Thai baht. I thought of making this video after reading a number of comments but this one pretty much exemplifies or acts as an example of the multitude of comments I have seen across our channel. By the way just a lot of trolls and haters and whatnot on our comments. Apparently, it's going around from one of the trolls that I'm smoking methamphetamine! Well guess what? I'm not smoking methamphetamine. To paraphrase old Aaron Lewis's song, Country Boy, "I rarely drink from the bottle, but I'll smoke a little weed" might sum me up to some extent, when I'm in my off time, and Thank God both of those products are legal here in Thailand. But that being said, no I'm not smoking any methamphetamine so how about just F off; I don't know. Do you not have anything better to do with your time than get on somebody else's channel that they make content for free, about events in Thailand and legalities and by the way things that expats had never been aware of before I made this channel? And you spend your time going around just making up nonsense about people just, wow. That being said, I didn't really mean to go off on to that tangent, but I mean it's hard enough to make this stuff and to see some of the things people put but then that kind of thing is just crazy. In any event, this comment does act as an example of the constructive comments, the good comments that we see across this channel; we are appreciative of those.

But quoting directly: "Can you talk about the surging of Thai baht? It's getting expensive to exchange to it and no one is talking about it." Well people are talking about it; expat and tourist Thailand is especially aware of this. I have been watching it rather closely. Frankly it's one of those things that, call me Thumper from Bambi, if you don't have something nice to say don't say anything at all. At the same time, I do feel at this point this channel has become something of a platform for people to look to for information on expat Thailand and I have talked a lot about economics and currency policies and things of that nature, so yeah, I think it is now warranted at this point. I was kind of hoping it would turn back around. I don't like it when it heads under 32. Frankly to my mind 32 against the Dollar is that sweet spot where everything is sort of hunky dory in terms of exports and tourism and whatnot, but that's not the way it's going. The Baht is strengthening. This is actually why some years back now - I can't believe that it's been this long - but going back to the beginning of this last Government, when this last Parliament was installed after the election going back in August of '23 and then in the immediate aftermath the sort of the Shinawatra faction, the Pheu Thai Party within the governing coalition, comes out and says that "oh we have got to go 20% debt to GDP ratio increase in order to create the Digital Wallet” which was a bunch of totalitarian tokens that would track and trace all of our financial transactions here in Thailand. They came out with that, and they wanted to put the country into a huge amount of debt to do it, on the basis that we needed economic stimulus then, which really was fallacious if you looked at the underlying dynamics. '22 had been a lot better than expected largely because coming off of COVID there was pent up demand for tourism, but also Thailand had something unique to offer insofar as Cannabis legalization had happened and I think we saw a whole new market in terms of Tourism. In fact, in that low season that proceeded into 2023 going into like June of '23, they were calling it the "Green Season" at that time because it wasn't a low season. People were hanging around and they were coming back to be here at a time that we didn't traditionally see a lot of tourists and a lot of that was being driven by Cannabis. Then that government comes along and starts messing with the Cannabis stuff but before that, again they wanted to go into a bunch of debt based on the notion of, "oh we need stimulus and things." My position at the time was we didn't really need it and in fact we needed to keep dry powder for purposes of possibly weakening the Baht down the road and here we are. It looks like the BoT, I have actually read a few articles that say that BoT is looking at easing measures. But that being said, this is more systemic. This is not, in fact it's not more systemic, it's structural if you will to the infrastructure of global trade, and I will explain what I mean by that. But I've seen this before. I've been through this in 2010, '11, and '12, when we saw the Thai Baht radically strengthen and - this was largely on the heels of quantitative easing as it began in the United States - and the Central Bank had to do all kinds of things to weaken the Baht. Jim Rickards, I can't remember which of his books, he calls them the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Currency Wars, the Death of Money; there are four titles in there. I think it's in the Death of Money where he talks about Thailand that Thailand actually had to go through a very odd roughly 20, 25 years coming off of 1997 where they were doing everything in their power to keep the Thai Baht stronger; they wanted to keep it internationally convertible and that led to a lot of policies that saw very lax rules on people coming in for retirement, for visas. Anybody that was coming in with foreign exchange was heavily encouraged because they needed it to keep the Baht in a good place with regard to international exchanges. And good on Thailand. They maintained the integrity of the currency, and we saw that good policy thinking bear out in the forthcoming 25 years. 

Things have changed now. The US is just in a totally different position. It is now Thailand, and Rickards pointed this out in his book, now Thailand has got to weaken her currency in order to try to deal with this "beggar thy neighbour". Trump seems to want a weaker dollar to strengthen American exports, which doesn't make a lot of sense when you understand how the Triffin Dilemma works, and where the US is at with regard to that. That being said, you can make the argument that "hey the bandage has to be pulled off sometime; we need on-shore jobs and things". I can see the argument. I don't know if the practicalities, the facts on the ground if you will, are going to bear that out in a positive light. It remains to be seen. I'll stay open-minded, but optimism doesn't get you there. The fact of the matter is, and this is getting to the structural stuff we're talking about here, the structure if you will, the tectonic plates of global trade are shifting wildly and strongly. There is a reason Trump is talking the way he talks about places like Greenland because there's a geopolitical theory talking about the Panama Canal, Greenland and Alaska and how that's what you need to control North America, maintain all the trade corridors, everything there. Meanwhile, over in East Asia and the BRICS countries, we have this whole Halford Mackinder World Island thing playing out and it's just happening. China and Russia are doing more trade; we're seeing BRICS rise now; there's getting to be more synergies. We are seeing hyper-industrialization in a lot of these countries. Very, very quickly Thailand is getting a best of all worlds sort of scenarios right now insofar as, in my opinion this will largely be something of a lateral move economically for Thailand. And what I mean to say is to use a metaphor, it's as if Thailand is sitting in the middle of a kaleidoscope and everything is moving around her. 

Now what everybody kind of agrees on is actually Thailand is taking pretty good care of her economy; Thailand is taking pretty good care of her currency. She has a real economy still; it hasn't been completely hollowed out notwithstanding the heavy-handed measures of the likes of the OECD, the World Economic Forum and other undue foreign influences that have been brought to bear in Thailand especially in the last couple of years. It's still one of the best economies insofar as it's stable, it's secure. The banks are actually far more solvent than anything you will see in other jurisdictions. The DSIPS here in Thailand are sound, and there's business to be done in a lot of different realms and Thailand is being to some extent encouraging of that. I think people are waiting for this upcoming election which brings me to further optimism about Thailand, and I think that the smart money is being optimistic about Thailand as well and I think that this is bearing out in the strength of the currency because people are quietly investing here, either in direct investments in terms of equities as well as real estate, but I also see it happening in gold and I think that is one of the reasons Thai Baht gold which is its own unique weight and measure of gold - which is very important for a variety of reasons - but it's very important from this perspective, because the rise of Thai gold is indicative in my opinion of the confidence in Thailand's overall economy, because people want to put it into something they view as safe within that economy, that is very fungible so they can interact with that economy at a later date, should they wish to do so. 

Now there has been a lot of talk, I've seen it in various newspaper articles, I will try to do videos on it over the course of the coming days. Again we're on break right now. I want to make topical videos basically because there are folks that want to know about like this Thai Baht thing, but again I would like to get some time off because we do have to decompress around here or we just can't do our jobs. But that being said, I will be making some videos about there's been talk of trying to tax gold transactions and things now. Nothing could be worse for this country. I mean frankly, the banking stuff that has happened in my opinion was a bad idea. This idea of taxes on gold and things because of "hot money" or some nonsense, that doesn't ring very well with me either. I think one of the things that attracts people to Thailand, especially with regard to gold, is the fact that it's VAT exempt, and it's very, very fungible; don't mess with it, okay. If we do, we're liable to shoot ourselves in the foot and set our economy back another 10 years. And so I don't really like hearing that kind of thing. But the developments that are leading to that kind of talk are very much cause for optimism moving forward. And what do I mean to say by that? 

Well look, I think this election is going to come off quite well. I think we're finally, after a long time going to get a very good idea of what Thais are thinking, rank and file, all the way to the top; what everybody sort of thinks is the right path for the future. And I think that there's going to be far more unity than a lot of the foreigners are projecting right now onto Thailand, and by that I mean even foreign undue influence. I'm really, really tired of the media apparatus and the way it treats Thailand frankly. And I'm going to be more vocal about that moving forward, and you will see that as we have other avenues where you will see me talking more news and things of that nature. But yeah, I haven't been real happy with the news apparati if you will from outside who are trying to push a lot of narratives onto Thailand that aren't necessarily in Thailand's interest. 

This whole thing going on with regard to the Thai baht, I get it. If you're a fixed pension retiree in Thailand and you are denominated in Dollars or Pounds or something that isn't the Baht, the Baht getting stronger is hurting you and I'm sorry. I don't think that's a good thing, I don't want that to happen, but it is happening. It needs to be acknowledged that is happening, but why is it happening? Well it's happening in my opinion because the East is rising. Thailand has a very strong economy. Expat land and tourist Thailand don't really ever seem to fully comprehend this, and I hear this a lot when I'm just hanging around having beers or whatever with expat guys and they'll say, basically, "well it's going to ruin the tourism sector, and then this country is just done". And it's like yeah, look tourism only accounts for at most now about 18% of GDP; that was pre-COVID numbers. I know that because I made the videos in the depths of COVID talking about the literal decimation of the tourism sector down to 1.8% of overall GDP. I want to say we made that video probably '23, January of '23 somewhere around there where I talked about that, but we were using pre-COVID numbers where tourism was 18% of GDP. I have to doubt it's as high as that now. I have to doubt we have probably never seen it go 18 or higher since COVID. It might have, maybe for a brief moment, but I would kind of doubt it. The point I'm trying to make is yes, tourism is important to Thailand. Is it vital? Will this country die without tourism? Not necessarily. So this is another structural thing that I see changing out here. Thailand itself is becoming a manufacturing powerhouse; Thailand itself is becoming heavily industrialized; Thailand itself has integrated its own economy - merely in the city - to staggering degrees compared to what I saw merely 18 years ago. I mean this whole city is now tied together by a light rail network unlike anything in Southeast Asia otherwise, and this just was not here some 15-20 years ago. In fact it wasn't here five years ago and now it is, and it's having tremendous impacts on the overall economy. 

In short, Thailand's economy is getting stronger, and notwithstanding the fact you'll hear a lot of people naysay Thailand and poopoo it here, “oh demography will work against them.” Look, Thailand has got plenty of cheap labour around; there are plenty of opportunities for them to be able to bring in cheap labour even if it doesn't come from Thailand. The demography problems of other jurisdictions do not necessarily have that kind of impact on Thailand. What's my point in all of this? I think this trend of a stronger Baht might be here to stay. Look the old peg, the sort of Bretton Woods peg if you will, Baht to Dollar that existed prior to the early '90s - I think – ‘92 they took it off of the fixed exchange rate of 25 to 1 - now going back into Bretton Woods, that was the peg that was set. The Dollar was pegged to gold, and then the Thai baht was pegged to the Dollar. So I think that there is some at least level of realism - and I'm not saying that the dollar to Baht should be 25 to 1 - that's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying though is that number was not arrived at apropos of nothing, and Thailand's economy is heavily misjudged by the rest of the world because they don't really read this economy for what it really is. They look at it oftentimes purely through GDP figures which is all a measure of bank credit at the end of the day, so you never see what I call the real economy here, the cash economy. What's some call, especially the OECD shills call the, they call it the "informal economy", the "gray economy", the "black market" and all of this nonsense because they don't control it; it's not in some digital system that they can track and trace and take a vig, take a piece, take a tax, take a fine or a fee or a transaction fee or whatever from you when you're making that transaction. They don't like that, so they call it the informal economy and things, but it's still part of the real economy here in Thailand. It really has an impact and Thailand's economy is actually strong. Western economies lack much to be desired as of the time of this video, and this is bearing out and being reflected in the exchange rates. Is it good? No it's not particularly good for tourists or expat Thailand. That said, I doubt we're going to see it abate all of that much leaving 2025. It may turn around in 2026, and we will certainly be keeping you updated on this channel, as the situation evolves.