Transcript of the above video:

As one can see, this is kind of an opinion video not really quite in the usual mold of the videos we usually do. The question posed is: "Are we going to see some kind of economic collapse here in Thailand because of debt?" I saw a video on YouTube basically stating that here recently. It had a number of views, clearly it was popular. I think there were a number of misnomers in that video for a number of different reasons and I didn't really decide to make a video until I was reading a recent comment on our channel. Quoting directly: "The Thai economy is going in the toilet because personal debt is 90% of GDP." Well yeah, I don't think that number is quite right as far as personal that being 90% of GDP. Although I could be wrong; maybe that on paper is what it currently looks like. 

That said Government debt isn't near that. In fact Thailand did have to make a special dispensation to I believe go up over the 60% mark but it's not much, and I hope they don't keep going up. In fact I think taking on any more debt at this time, especially public debt at this time, would not be very beneficial for much of anybody. That said, there's a big misunderstanding in all of this. Again I am not going to even point to the video by link or anything mostly because I don't really see a point; secondly I don't agree with it and thirdly there is a massive missing piece when analyzing this topic and that is Thai GDP. Thai GDP is not quantified. I don't think whatever numbers there are out there that quantify Thai GDP are anywhere near the real numbers of the real economy of Thailand. I remember talking to somebody years ago who was kind of one of these old Asia expat guys telling me about going to a conference I believe at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand wherein the former, I believe Foreign Minister, excuse me Finance Minister of Thailand, I believe Korn was commenting on the state of the Thai economy. During that comment he noted that it was it was only a fraction of Thailand's real economy that was actually quantified into the analysis of real GDP in terms of the Thai Economy. I think for this reason people often times get these sort of 'doom and gloom' predictions about the future of Thailand because they don't fully understand that Thailand has a very vibrant cash economy and it has a very vibrant economy that is based on basically just street level sole proprietorship businesses that are a substantial factor in the Economy. Again, as they say when talking about economics generally or GDP, specifically in an American context for example, they often talk about how small businesses are the real drivers of the economy notwithstanding the fact everybody looks at big corporations and this and that, it is the 'Mom and Pop' shops that really drive the day-to-day GDP. Well we have got 'Mom and Pop' shops bringing up everywhere here in Thailand and quite honestly they are often times cash businesses; they are just simply not on the radar of the economists who quantify Thai GDP. So for that reason, I am just not going to be worrying about the sky falling in terms of the "debt collapse" in the Thai Economy when most folks don't even know just how big the full extent of the Thai Economy is.