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As the title of this video suggests we are discussing "totalitarianism will avert economic crisis in Thailand." I am going to dig into this and then I will get into the analysis. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Digital Wallet committee to resume planning. Quoting directly. So for those who are unaware, before I get into the quotes, I have done a number of videos on this “Digital Wallet” which basically is summed up is what we are calling in this sort of the Western Twittersphere, the ether of the internet what we would call CBDC, Central Bank Digital Currencies. These are digital currencies that you will have to use to transact economically. In Thailand it's kind of being wrapped together with this kind of I don't know what you call a Neo-Keynesian stimulus; we called it stymie-checks back in the United States. When COVID kicked, off they just started printing money and I would actually argue, and there is a guy out on Twitter, a professor over at Cornell University, Professor David Collum who brought up the fact and I tend to agree and I kind of thought it at the time although I couldn't articulate it, that would we really have had the massive Covid problems, especially from the lockdowns and things if the Fed, the Federal Reserve hadn't paid for it all back in the United States by just printing money and handing out checks and giving out PPP loans and all of this. Now Thailand didn't do that. We went through all the lockdowns and things, but for the most part, other than some limited things to sort of encourage tourism and the abatement of like tolls and things on freeways, for the most part I will say there was a certain amount of relief provided to certain sectors of the business industry with regard to allowing people to work from home or if they needed to sort of furlough people and there were compensation or I should say programs in place to sort of ameliorate the worst aspects of the lockdown. So I am not going to say that the Thai Government just shut everybody down without any action taken to mitigate the fallout. That said, it was pretty weak compared to the level of lockdown we all had to go through. More importantly it only really mitigated the effect on those who are in what I would call the more formalized economy. So the folks that work and live in the informal economy, so-called cash economy, however you want to look at it, they didn't get to avail themselves of a lot of this stuff and in fact that led to a great deal of consternation at the time. The point I am trying to make with this is for example in the US or Europe, massive programs were initiated to try to mitigate the financial fallout from all the lockdowns. Now I don't think that was necessarily the right thing to do, in fact I think the whole lockdown thing was a bad idea, I think history has proven that out. That said, they did that. Thailand didn't do as much and it has now become part of the narrative associated with this Digital Wallet that we need to do this as a stimulus measure, let me get into it. 

In any in any event, again quoting: Digital Wallet committee to resume planning, Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, quoting directly: "The Digital Wallet policy is necessary to avert an economic stimulus (correction: crisis) similar to the crash of 1997. The Government has maintained the need to stimulate the economy through its Digital Wallet scheme by saying that the country's economy is in a state of crisis as it expanded at an average rate of 1.9% per year over the past decade." Well first of all, expansion at 1.9% per year, that's growth. Now is it optimal growth? Is it exactly what we want to see? No, but I mean look at the West in terms of real growth when you take out a lot of different factors most notably money printing, as well as Government expenditure, I mean where has been the real growth in the West? If we are comparing to the West, 1.9% of real growth is not too bad and again Thailand should not be compared on a one-to-one basis with other economies in Southeast Asia in my opinion, or I should say with all the other economies in Southeast Asia. I think it is a fair comparison to compare Thailand for example to Malaysia, to some extent to Singapore although I really hate when Westerners compare Singapore to any other jurisdiction because one is a City State so it doesn't have to administer the same type of nation-state that for example Thailand or Malaysia needs to deal with, nor does it have to deal with the same level of population and yeah, they are a big Financial Center. I mean comparing Hong Kong to mainland China 30 years ago and even today, is not an overly accurate comparison. I think the same can be said trying to compare Singapore one-to-one to Thailand, it is not a fair comparison. Again Malaysia, yeah, I think fair comparison; even Vietnam although a caveat I would make with Vietnam is they are starting from a different position. Thailand has been highly sophisticated, highly developed economy for a longer time than Vietnam has been so making the comparisons in Vietnam's growth rate up against Thailand's it is not overly fair because Thailand has already done a lot of major infrastructure development that factors into GDP - again GDP being in and of itself merely a metric of bank credit within a given economy, again it doesn't take into account the informal economy. Again if you were to take that into account in Thailand I think the GDP numbers would be far higher.

Leaving that aside though, I don't think it is it is a very fair comparison to look at Vietnam versus Thailand on a one-to-one basis because again there are different aspects to their economy; again Thailand is much more developed, Vietnam is able to get a lot more "growth" points if you will by the fact that they don't have the infrastructure they need to build it and then that stimulates growth whereas Thailand already has that stuff in place, so again, 1.9% growth rate in a country that is already largely developed or has significant sophisticated infrastructure, that is not necessarily a terrible thing. Yes we would all love to make more money, we would all have to see the economy grow more but at a certain point you have to kind of say “hey it is not bad that we are growing at this rate, we would like to do better but it is not something that the sky is falling over”.

Quoting further: "It plans to obtain 500 billion Baht loans to finance the scheme but critics warn that this could violate the State Fiscal and Financial Discipline Act.” Yeah, I fail to see where just creating a 500 billion baht debt on the nation, again I have done a video on this, I fail to see where value for value, so I have heard it said that debt is spending money, it is sort of pulling forward economic power if you will and paying it off later - you pay more later for an immediate effect now, that is the best way to look at it. You pay more later, for an immediate effect now. But the problem is where is the value? The nation goes into 500 billion in debt for what? Because they just create these digital tokens out of thin air. It's not like we borrowed 500 billion Baht in silver or gold or even paper money that had to be printed and then has at least a value-metric to it. This is just internet tokens created out of thin air and again as we discussed in other videos they said themselves it has a geographic limit; they can dictate the geography in which you can spend it, and they can dictate how it is spent, the products that it can buy. One, I question how is that money or currency or anything in any way the term has been defined up to this moment, one, I don't see how that's money. Two, where is the value for value in terms of the loan? The Government goes into debt, or I should say the nation goes into debt by 500 billion Baht and for what? We didn't get any value for the loan. We just created a bunch of chits that we exchange amongst ourselves and move things around within the economic system without creating any new value. As I discussed in another video, it basically just creates more opportunity for taxation because it creates more taxable events as a result of creating this digital script if you will that cannot be, again I don't see where the value for value loan - we have to pay back 500 billion by way of taxes I am presuming, but what did we get it from? We just got digital tokens that anybody could have created with a keystroke. Where's the value that the nation got up front. "It plans to obtain 500 billion Baht loans to finance the scheme but critics warned that this could violate the State Fiscal and Financial Discipline Act because the country has shown no sign of being in a crisis that needs such as scheme to urgently shore up the economy." Yeah, when this was implemented in the United States they did it immediately. They closed everything down and then they started printing money, probably as sort of for lack of a better term to quote Karl Marx, as an opiate of the masses, to calm everybody down because they had shut them all down. I completely disagree with the COVID policies if you can't tell from the tenure of this channel and what I have discussed on it. But leave that aside, in the present situation is Thailand really in an economic crisis? I don't think so. If you want to point to an economic crisis, 2020, 2021 and part of 2022 were an acute economic crisis because you shut us all down; you said we couldn't work; you said we couldn't do business. Now I agreed at the time, Thailand did a true quarantine and that was laudable. Thailand did not mess around. I have high regard for the Public Health sector in that way but I hope in the future, Thailand will utilize more scrutiny when looking at International narratives which pertain to Public Health as it would be applied on the national level here in Thailand, as policy would be applied at the national level here in Thailand. 

Leaving that aside though, I think it's a fair criticism that look we just came off of a high season it was pretty darn good all things considered. We actually beat targets, not by much, but we beat targets in terms of tourists and if nothing else. the informal economy certainly I think is back on track. Quite honestly if there was a crisis that required this level of state intervention and the massive up ending of the Monetary System of this country to this point, maybe there was an argument to be made in 2020 or 2021 that it was warranted under those conditions. As of now, really? I don't really see it. More importantly and more to the point, I have a tremendous amount of problem with this digital money which isn't money because you can't spend it anywhere; it is not fully fungible as is cash and it would put the country into a significant amount of debt under this currently truncated scheme which if you recall from prior videos, when this started out they were talking about 1.5 trillion Baht in debt, that has come down to 500 billion Baht in debt. That's still about 3.5%, an addition to the debt to GDP ratio that will be foisted on to the nation here, foisted onto Thailand and really again for what? There is no value for value transaction. We could just create at a keystroke tomorrow a bunch of digital tokens. Why does the nation need to go into 500 billion baht in debt in order to do that? Why can't we just do that on a computer and say, "oh this is this new script, go use it?" Why does the country need to go into 500 billion baht in debt to do that because again where is the value transferred in that equation? I don't see it, so again that is kind of where I stand on it obviously. That being said, I don't really see these totalitarian measures are necessary to avert any kind of a "pressing economic crisis” at the moment here in the Kingdom of Thailand.