Transcript of the above video: 

The question posed in this video, ‘why do I care so much about this so-called digital wallet scheme?’ And again, this is an opinion piece, as you'll note in the thumbnail. So, this is just one man's opinion, so take it or leave it but the reason I care so much about this is because quite honestly, this is full blown Communism. That's really the only word for it. I believe it was Stalin who once said that communism is socialism in a hurry; I've often quipped that Keynesianism is socialism by subterfuge. Well, this thing is communism by subterfuge on steroids, quite honestly. There's really no other word for it and when people ask me that, they said "Well it doesn't apply to everybody." Well okay. Well first, so it only applies to the people who take the money which are obviously going to be the people who are at the lower end of the economic strata? So, we'll only enserf them in some kind of future communist dystopia? But beyond even that, it's not, it's not actually that. And I have noticed there has been a lot of mitigating action if you will, taken by those who seem to be pushing this. I find it also interesting, this has a lot to do with quite honestly the World Economic Forum's agenda and all these agendas of these internationalists or globalists, whatever you want to call them who don't seem to give much of a care in the world about how this would impact the vast majority of people and their freedoms and liberties as just people walking around, because it will have tremendous implications as we'll get into later in this video.

But long story short, the other reason I am so concerned is that it will have an impact across the board. There is no strata of the economy that will not be impacted by this and what I find rather ironic is the upper end of the social strata - especially so called celebrities and things - they don't necessarily care so much about privacy because for most of their careers they haven't really had it and that can be said for a lot of public figures out there. But at the end of the day, for the vast majority of people, having privacy, basic privacy in even just minor transactions, that's a right, that's a human right. People have the right to not have oversight associated with their basic economic needs to say the least, let alone the fact that quite honestly, people have a right to privacy in all, in my opinion, their economic transactions. So as one of the first citations we're going to put up here regarding this whole thing, I'm thinking of a quote, I'm paraphrasing it, and I'm probably butchering it, from Donald Sutherland in the movie Citizen X where he said, and this is set in the USSR, this is set in late Soviet era Russia where he said: "The measure of a good bureaucracy is that it gives special consideration to no one," and that's what I see coming with this as we'll get into later. 

That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article, actually a number of recent articles; hats off to the Bangkok Post very much so for staying on top of this whole issue, but I thought of making this article after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Union urges Bank to come clean over digital wallet financing role. Then in there, there is the quotation from the former Prime Minister here in Thailand, quoting directly: "Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on Saturday expressed confidence in the Government's 500 billion Baht handout," - bear this in mind, again it is a 500 billion, half a trillion Baht handout, which first of all let's just talk Keynesianism for a moment. What is Keynesianism? Well Keynes came up with this idea: at its most basic it is when there's an economic downturn, the government steps in and spends money to "stimulate" the economy and then when there's an upswing, basically taxes to make up for what they spent and reaches a kind of equilibrium. It's one of these theories that makes great sense on paper but honestly as a practical matter, doesn't really work. And as I have said earlier, I quipped before where Joe Stalin once said "communism is socialism in a hurry", Keynesianism is socialism by subterfuge." I remember in the 90s growing up in America, it was anathema that the Government would even think of getting involved in the economy, and then slowly but surely with these Keynesian notions, we ended up with massive government intervention in the economy to the point now where quite honestly the United States particularly, but the rest of the West, I mean Europe as well, some of the Anglosphere has serious problems with debt to GDP ratio issues, on-going debt issues, debt financing issues because of too much Central planning intervention. That is what it comes down to is a small group of people think they can coordinate the economy in any way. The 20th century if nothing else, proved this was not possible. Now it's possible to manipulate it for a short period of time but the ramifications are dire and we have seen the ramifications long-term. I grew up, I left the United States at a time when I saw them overly intervening some 15 years ago and I could see what was coming and we are here now basically because there has been too much intervention and it's unnecessary and quite honestly it goes against basic notions of free markets. And I didn't use the term capitalism because let's be clear, there's a very big difference between free enterprise and capitalism. Capitalism interestingly enough, Das Kapital was a book written by Karl Marx, because it's the other side of the coin of Communism in a Hegelian dialectic between those two systems. At the end of the day the synthesis of which or the extremes of either end of that dialectic, end up in the same place which is a small group of people - in the capitalist system you call them interlocking directorships; in the Communist system you just call them call the Commissars - a small group of people directing the economy and it doesn't work out well, even this synthesis of it doesn't work out very well. Free enterprise must prevail. If you want a strong economy, it's free enterprise that keeps it going. As I have discussed in other videos, it was the informal economy that ultimately took years, but it was the informal economy that saved Thailand financially. At the end of the day, it was the informal economy. I read some articles recently, like vitriolic articles from Bankers saying: "we have got to get this informal economy just under control, get it" - no we don't. We don't! Thailand is for the Thais. It is about freedom. People need to be able to operate freely within a free enterprise system. Obviously, there are regulations that are needed to live in a lawful society; I'm not saying that, but again this Government intervention is what is causing the problems and I will get further into that. Quoting further: "during his visit to his home province of Chiang Mai for the Songkran festival." Quoting further: "He brushed aside criticism and said the country's economy remained sluggish but was expected to improve after the digital wallet rollout." 

Two things: First of all, the economy is sluggish because the economy was shut down by Central planners for years, that's why the economy is sluggish, okay? Secondly, explain to me how a "digital wallet rollout" will improve anything if it doesn't create any new value? All it is is a redistribution of chits and moves pre-existing goods and services around, creating taxable events, that doesn't actually create any new value. So the underlying real economy, how does it improve in that scenario? 

Quoting directly: "Our country's growth is slower than that in other ASEAN countries because there isn't enough money in the system." Okay. This is one of these Keynesian arguments and I heard this, it's this whole liquidity argument that you'll hear about - let me quote again: "Our country's growth is slower than that in other ASEAN and countries because there isn't enough money in the system." First off, again NO, it's because the economy was fully shut down for years and it takes a minute; you don't just flip a switch and it turns back on. That was the silliness that got us into that kind of thinking and I'm not blaming the Thai system entirely for that. Governments around the world including the United States, they did this as well and it was it was foolish there too in my opinion. So that's the first thing. Also, “other ASEAN countries because there isn't enough money in the system." No Thailand looks relatively sluggish compared to their growth in terms of GDP - which is merely a metric of bank credit - because other nations are engaging in infrastructure projects more basic than Thailand's because Thailand's economy is more developed and more sophisticated. Thailand isn't building highways for the first time; Thailand isn't building railroads for the first time or telephone lines or telecommunications lines. Thailand has all that infrastructure already, so when a less developed country - say Indonesia for example - makes a capital improvement, their GDP goes up substantially but Thailand's looks like it's slower. Well yeah, when you are starting from zero, there's nowhere to go but up; when you're already at 89 and you go up to 90, relative to going from 0 to 50, it looks substantially different, but at the end of the day it's indicative of the fact that Thailand already has a developed economy. Quoting further: "The Government seeks to inject money to stimulate it." How does that work? Because the West is the best example right now of how printing money and just shooting it into the system does not help with the fundamentals. If anything, it actually makes the populations of those societies more complacent to the underlying fundamental problems within the real economy and thereby not address them. Quoting further: "Thaksin said the sluggish economy was due to delayed approval of the annual budget and bureaucratic changes that hindered swift implementation." So, the lack of Government intervention in a free market economy, that's the problem? Again, I fail to see where this verbiage is getting all that different from communistic types of discussion. Okay?

So that said, leaving that and moving over here to again Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: PM Srettha reiterates faith in the wallet handout scheme. Quoting directly: "He said the terms and conditions for spending the handout were different from those of previous handout schemes including those implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic. Recipients of the digital wallet scheme are required to spend the money in their localities, which is intended to stimulate the sluggish economy in the provinces." A couple of interesting things here. First of all, the Government goes into debt which the people are going to eventually have to repay in the form of their taxes, but the Government gets to tell you where you spend your own money, effectively, okay? And for those that think I'm overreacting to this, I'm going to put up a clip. This actually comes from the Twitter account of Mr. Jim Rickards, James G. Rickards and I'll put this up on screen, his actual Twitter quote: "I wrote years ago this was coming. Here it is and then a sub-tweet that he's retweeting under Crypto T - Bank in Canada won't let customer withdraw cash. they ask him to prove why he needs cash.

And then we're going to go ahead and play that clip here. 

"I can't what, wait, I don't understand. What you are talking about?

I need to give you a bank draft or if you can get cash I would need the invoice or receipt. 

Why? I'd like to it's for the car’s payment in cash, I can't use a bank draft. 

Are you buying from like a private? 

Yeah it's private. It's from my friend. 

From your friend? 

Yeah but he wants it in cash. 

Can you give like anything.??..

No you don't need that. What is it? I am only asking for three, what is this? It’s my money, I am allowed to withdraw from my own bank account. 

Yeah, what's the maximum limit you can give a withdrawal to a customer? It's 3,000 on the date. You've already mentioned that multiple times. 

Not today. 

Why not today? 

Today I need a paper, or proof, Or you can.. 

You need proof of what it is? Why is that, why is that? Why is that? why do you need, why do you need me to tell you what it is, what kind of proof is that. I bring in a note? What is that going to... I don't understand. You need to give me my money. I'm not taking a bank draft; I would like cash please. I am just going to sit here until you give me cash so I'm not going to leave.

Okay...

What are you going to do? Who am I waiting for? 

I can get the manager to talk to you. 

Well yeah get the manager because this is unbelievable."

Now bear in mind, this is in the West okay and it is Canada which I don't know, has become some sort of dystopian neo-Marxist hellscape for lack of a better term, and no offense to Canadians, but I don't think a lot of you would disagree at this point. But again, imagine how we like, if you watch this video and you see that he is actually, this person is able to physically talk to people and say: "what are you talking about? I want my own money out of the bank. Why do you need to know why I'm doing anything with it?" Imagine what it is going to be like if it's digital, where all you get is just a screen that pops back to you that says "oh you can't do that", for whatever reason - the product you're buying, we don't think it's the good time of day to buy it; we don't think you're in the right place to buy." How many iterations of quite honestly tyranny can be rolled out with a digital system like that? Again, and who do you call? Anybody that has used a lot of these new websites now or haven't been directed to a web portal rather than a real person to deal with matters, you know, do you deal with this, is it easy? No, it's harder in most cases. I have made videos about that talking about the Immigration System, most notably the US Immigration System, where in the past, if I had a real problem with US Immigration, I would get on the phone. Yes, I would be on the phone for a while on hold and then you get somebody and you talk to them. Now you get the run around if you try to call anybody and they just redirect you to an online system or send you to an AI portal and all it does is just spins its wheels if the system doesn't want you to do what you're trying to do. And that's what it comes down to. Well, imagine that scenario, only again it's your money, and this is not far off, this is not some pie in the sky notion. Again that clip was just put out. That's real, that's happening in real time now. Again, imagine what will happen if there is a digital mechanism for accomplishing that?

Okay meanwhile, I'm going to move over to the print edition of the Bangkok Post here real quick. I am going to put this up on screen, title is: Digital Wallet 'super app' to link with bank apps. So for those who think "oh okay the banking system in Canada, that's a different thing than the banking system here in Thailand," well no, they are linking them together. Quoting directly: "The so-called super app earmarked for the 10,000 baht digital wallet scheme will work in sync with existing mobile applications for banks on users' phones, according to Deputy Finance Minister Julapun Amornvivat." So yeah, this has a banking aspect to it. Going back to again that article titled: PM Srettha reiterates faith in wallet handout scheme. Quoting directly: "Economist Anusorn Thamjai on Monday issued a "five-point caution" to the Government regarding the plan to borrow from the BAAC." (and apparently that's the Agricultural Bank and there's some kind of complex scheme for funding this because they are saying "well we're not using debt" - which we will get into that in a minute - "we're not using it the way that you think we're using it," my personal opinion, a bunch of smoke and mirrors and I will get into why here in a minute, but that's the background, that's the BAAC. I urge those who are watching this video, go check out all these articles in detail; you can read the details of this and gain your own insight into it. Quoting further: "Among them is that the Government should devise a repayment and compensation plan in which 40-50 billion Baht should be allocated to the BAAC per year, to prevent potential financial issues affecting the bank." Well again I thought this wasn't coming out of debt at all. I thought it came out of the budget; money already collected. Quoting further, and here's a real zinger: "The borrowed amount is initially classified as "off-budget" and not immediate public debt." I state that again: "The borrowed amount is initially classified as "off-budget" and not immediate public debt." 

So there's a great book out there, it's called The Smartest Guys in the Room and it's a book about the Enron Corporation which went bust back in about 2006, 2007 - maybe a little bit earlier than that - 2005, maybe. Yeah I was in law school when all this happened. In fact, we studied the Sarbanes-Oxley Act quite a bit because it was a response to what had happened under Enron. One of the things Enron was known to do, it's one of these pieces of accounting and financial chicanery, was to create special purpose vehicles to create off balance sheet places where Enron could put substantial amounts of debt that it didn't want its shareholders and auditors to see. And at the time, it was sort of gray area legal and if you recall, Arthur Anderson ended up exploding over the whole thing because they signed off on some things basically that they shouldn't have in terms of the legality of the whole thing. But long story short, this was a known practice at the time, these special purpose vehicles, that allowed for off-balance sheet debt holding that then the underlying shareholders or anyone else concerned with the financial health of that company couldn't see. Quoting further: "However, the borrowed amount could become public debt if future revenue cannot be raised to cover it, he said." I state that again, let me quote that again. Put that on screen, again: "However, the borrowed debt could become public debt if future revenue cannot be raised to cover it, he said." Well a couple of things here. As noted, this stimulus doesn't create any new value in the economy, it creates new taxable events which they can then tax people on or corporations or whatever, so some revenue will come out of that but no underlying value, okay? And then on top of it, they are all at the same time saying "well the economy is so sluggish, it’s so sluggish that we need to do this", but we're not going to do it until the 4th quarter of the year which takes us over into a new fiscal year it is my understanding, or at least partially into a new fiscal year when we come back to relook at this. When we do that, is there going to be enough revenue or are they just going to call it public debt then? Do you see what I am saying? They are deferring the labelling of it as 'debt' using what, it basically amounts to something akin to what in the Smartest Guys in the Room book said, Special Purpose Vehicle to take it off calling it debt today, but if we don't do this, that and the other thing, which we probably won't do anyway and they are even saying that "well the economy is sluggish, this is why we have to do this," so it seems logical to infer it is possible it could happen that we won't have the revenue and therefore have to classify this as debt later. Quoting further: Quote: "As the borrowed amount is initially classified as 'off- budget' and not immediately public debt, the estimated public debt could be lower than it is." Now that is about as much of a definition of technocratic economic gobbledygook as I have ever heard. "So it's debt, unless it's not debt, unless we say it's debt and it could be debt but it's not debt; it is today, it's gone tomorrow; it's a whozee, it's a whatsee; it's a Bugazzii, it's a this, it's a that.” Come on, come on. At the end of the day, you are trying to use debt to create an infrastructure that would cast a huge net of surveillance on every single Thai for any transaction possibly in the future that they would undertake because apparently they are trying this into the banking system and this is not pie in the sky talk; this is not some kind of chimeric problem in the future. This is already happening in other jurisdictions where we can see it and those jurisdictions are dealing with cash. We are not even talking about having a digital system where again you won't even talk to a person. They'll just say "well you can't have your cash for that purpose", "can't use your digital tokens for that purpose". Again my problems with this don't again, I was listening to I believe it was Dave Callum the other day, and I'll put up a link in the description below to his Twitter, he does a lot of YouTube as well, where he was talking about how Matt Taibbi got into all the chicanery that went down in the last financial crisis in the United States and it was only when Taibbi heard that it's not a financial problem, it's a crime problem that his paradigm shifted. I'm not saying there is any crime going on here, but this is not a financial issue to my mind. This is a Marxism issue quite honestly. I know I'm getting a little sweaty on this video; it's hot in this room but I want to get this thing done and out, so to my mind and I don't necessarily think any of the folks that are trying to go for this are like Marxists or anything, and I just think that this is a lot of technological smoke and mirrors. I think people can act in good faith and say "oh hey we don't actually have to print money; we can create stimulus in the economy and then just do it all digitally." I think people are actually acting in good faith but I don't think they are really looking at the ramifications of this and I don't think they understand that the places where these plans and schemes are promulgated, do not have the best intentions of the populations of the world at heart. I definitely don't think they care at all about the population of Thailand, these internationalists, these globalists. At the end of the day, I just think they like control or whatever. But long story short, again I don't think any of the local people here, I just think it's one of those things that sounds like a good idea and then you dig into it just a little bit, not unlike Communism for that matter or Marxism - "each according to his ability, each according to his needs" - now that sounds really nice until you dig in to the implementation of it and it is horrible; it's basically the horrific history of the 20th century. 

Long story short, and again before I melt like a snow cone in Phoenix, the point I'm trying to make here, again this is not a finance issue; this is not a liquidity issue fundamentally, and secondly if nothing else the past 15 years has proven that this whole "oh let's just inject liquidity and that'll solve all problems", it doesn't. It has been proven that it doesn't. You can look over at the West and just see that that is the case; it's self-evident at this point, okay? The point I'm trying to make though is the other side of the coin is also, it's basically totalitarian surveillance and it's us Thais that would in the end be the ones paying for it.