Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the "worldly" dictating to Thailand. What are we talking about here? Let's just dig into it. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Thai Examiner, that is thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Economy at cross roads: World Bank calls for structural reform to avert two decades of low growth. Quoting directly: "It's an economic SOS," I love the hyperbole, and I usually like the Thai Examiner but hyperbole is what it is. "It's an economic SOS!" The World Bank sounds the alarm! Aging woes, private sector debt and corruption threatened 20 Years of sluggish growth. Urgent structural reform is needed to avoid stagnation." I always love how the outsiders come into Thailand, it's like "you need to fundamentally change the entirety of your system. This cannot go on." It's like yeah except they have been doing it for thousands of years uninterrupted. Quoting further: "Shockingly low third-quarter GDP figures this year confirm to the government that the Kingdom's economy is in crisis." Well I don't know that that confirms anything; it confirms the third quarter of 2023 wasn't real good. Well I am here to tell you going into that quarter, anybody with half a brain could have told you that wasn't going to be a good quarter. It was the low season in terms of Tourism; we have come off, and I'm going to get into this in a little bit, but we have come off of two and a half years of not having an economy whatsoever because another World Organization, the World Health Organization told us we all had to shut down, so perhaps we are a little tired of listening to what the World or the "worldly" think we should be doing here, okay? You came in here with your last "solution" which led to this problem which you are now coming at us with the "solution of"! I always love the foreigners here. The solution is always, "fundamentally change the structure of Thailand". Why? We will get into this a little bit, but they go into sluggish growth; I love that. "Sluggish growth". Not lack of growth. I believe the US might be in a recession which is not growth, it's less than growth okay?

Also this whole notion, I've done a video already on this and we accidentally, it is my fault, when I was scheduling everything around, I accidentally put two videos on the same time slot over this over this past weekend at the time of this video, but one of them was on this notion of "Is Thailand's economy at a Crossroads?" and I say there's a different perspective to that. Thailand is standing in the middle of a kaleidoscope. The rest of the world's economy is indeed and in fact at a crossroads I would argue. Thailand's not so much. Thailand in my opinion stands in the middle of this kaleidoscope; all this stuff is going to move around and morph around it but Thailand is going to remain largely what Thailand is, just doing what Thailand does, that kind of thing. In any event, let me finish this quotation. "Shockingly low third quarter GDP figures this year confirm to the Government that the Kingdom's economy is in crisis. A new World Bank report confronts this." I like "confronts". What do you mean confront? How do you confront in a report? "and points the finger at the country's aging demographics." I always love this. Peter Zeihan gets on this all the time. It is all demography. There's something to demography, I agree. But again what the World Bank is apparently not seeing is that yes, Thailand's demographics are what they are. We saw it and again, as they get into in this article, the reason Thailand's demographics have changed is because years ago World Organizations said Thailand was having too many kids; that is my interpretation of all of this. So yet again, the World comes in with their big solution and honestly, I think Thailand suffers for it every time the World shows up and tells Thailand what to do, or Thailand takes them up on their suggestion and then lo and behold, not so great outcome. Again, it was the World Health Organization that told us to shut down our entire economy over what could only have been described as a rather aggressive cold and flu season at the end of the day. I know that is a controversial point to make in 2021 but sitting here at the end of 2023, in retrospect knowing what we know, and what we now know wasn't what we were told by people like the World Health Organization, I have problems believing anybody from such Organizations moving forward because of what we saw in the past, most recent past, which we should not forget either. 

Quoting further: "However, there are also problems with private sector debt, education and corruption. Any real solution will take time, a responsible approach and a new vision." Well yeah of course. Everything that ends up with a good solution needs a responsible approach and new vision. We get it, okay? Responsible approach and new vision. But I don't know that we need ‘new vision’. I think Thailand is pretty okay and I think Thailand knows better about her own economy than anyone. As I talked about in another video, again this notion that Thailand's growth; I like how they say "growth is retarded". So it's not growing as fast as Bankers would like. Well the West doesn't seem to be growing much at all, in fact it seems there may be some evidence to suggest Western economies are contracting so to level this kind of criticism Thailand is not only in my opinion unwarranted, it is a bit hypocritical. 

Meanwhile, okay as we discussed in other videos Thailand has got a massive informal economy; a massive informal economy the likes of which for example the World Bank is not going to be able to see or quantify or put in any kind of metrics. As we discussed in other videos, GDP itself is a measurement of bank credit so it's not a full picture of a Nation's entire economy. Now economies that have become heavily, heavily financialized, yeah they can track and trace pretty much everything going on in the economy, so they have got a good idea, not just what GDP is, but what the overall economy looks like through the prism of GDP. It doesn't work so well here in Thailand nor in my opinion should it. I think Thailand should do everything in its power to maintain its informal economy because every time we have looked at the financial problems Thailand has had, most notably the '97 crash, it was the informal economy that allowed Thailand to sort of limp along, get out of it, pay off their IMF responsibilities and get on down the road. 

So again, the point I am trying to make in this video is, it is getting a little old as somebody who has lived here and kind of has an idea how all this stuff works, it gets a little old to hear all these "worldly" institutions tell Thailand what to do.