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As the title of this video may or may not suggest, well the title suggests, I don't think the Thai baht is going anywhere. Now the thumbnail is actually from the series The Man in the High Castle, which I actually read that book by Philip K. Dick which it is quite a short little book. It's a novel but it's interesting. It posits a world in which the Axis powers won the Second World War and what the United States would look like if it was half occupied basically by the Germans and the other half was occupied by the Imperial Japanese. In the later seasons which drift wildly away from the premise of the underlying book, there's this plot arc if you will where the Americans have sort of overthrown the Japanese Colonialists in San Francisco and that's reference to the thumbnail - put the link in the description below - and they come into this room while they're like sleeping, because the Japanese sort of pull out, they walk into this room and there's this guy who he says his name and they say, "you need to get on out of here", and he says, "we're not going anywhere; you're going to need us," and they find out that he's a Yakuza and that he says "you're going to need our help in turning back on the water, the electricity, the oil pipeline etc." but there's a line in there where it says, "we're not going anywhere," and I've used this thumbnail before when I was talking, about a year ago, about the possibility of legalization of casinos because there was a line in there where he says, "it's one thing to overthrow a Government, it's another thing to be the Government." My thinking was at that time, my hope, and then that Government ended up thinking it was a good idea to sell out all casino interests to foreign interest which was terrible, but I was of the opinion that it should be done much like many of the tribal, back home the sovereign nations in the United States, many of the Tribal Nations do it where they own it and then they have a manager manage it. That being said, kind of digressing but it connects too; I've used this thumbnail in the past. 

But the reason for using it now, I thought of making this video after reading an email sent to us by a viewer and I appreciate it when folks send me emails. Little suggestions and things as well as data points; they'll send me material to do videos on, so that's much appreciated. Tip of the hat to that person.  

Before we get into quoting it, worth pointing out, my better half and I did set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok. If you watch these videos and never feel the need, or maybe never need to avail yourselves of our Law firm which that's not a bad thing in many ways, but if you ever feel the need for some American Diner style food, my better half and set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok. The name of the place is Pancake Palace. As the name implies, breakfast anytime, as well as American Diner style food; we also have an English breakfast as well for the British in the audience. We've also got hamburgers, cheeseburgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, buffalo wings, chilli bowls, Coke in glass bottles. If you're interested, come on by Pancake Palace, we'd love to see you; links are in the description below. 

Now let's jump into this email that got me thinking of making this video. "Hi Ben, love the videos and many thanks for making them." - Well you're welcome. Tip of the hat to you sir - "they are always good." - thank you - "May I suggest another video. There is going to be some kind of Bank crash, a big change to the banking system worldwide. Many people have 800,000 or 400,000 Thai Baht in Thai bank accounts. Is this money under threat of bail in by the banks or reduction in value? If so, it would be wise to remove it and put it elsewhere, but this then means one has not got the money in the Thai bank accounts to qualify for the Visas. A dilemma. Could you please make a video about this, and what may be the best options." 

A couple of things here. First of all, the notion of a bail in. We've heard of the notion of a bail in.  This is as opposed to a bail out where the government just gave the bank's money going back into like 2008 in the United States in the aftermath of so-called Tarp etc., and we saw a situation where the Government just basically printed money and gave it to the banks in order to keep the system going. Now there were those that felt like it was absolutely necessary at the time. My personal opinion is look if we're going to be a free market system, people need to fail and Banks are no different than anyone else. And it's a real problem I've seen since 2008, this whole paradigm that the banks are somehow qualitatively different than all of the rest of us. Also this notion that our money is no longer ours in the bank, but yet when the banks fail, they get our money to re-hypothecate themselves, which in and of itself is an annoyance. That being said, let's get to the issue of Thailand. I talked about this this past summer when Fitch was running around doing all kinds of what I can only describe as hit pieces in the English language press here in Thailand, where they were saying, "oh is the Thai Banking System structurally unsound?" And then in the final paragraph of that same article they said, "well actually they tested it and the Thai banking system held up to stress tests." 

Since 1997 Thailand has effectively been inoculated against these kind of problems because the Thais are incredibly assiduous about monitoring bank solvency; they are not going to let this happen again. Now famous last words, but I don't think so. I've been around here long enough to see their attitude, to see their protocols and things, yeah, I'm not worried about the banks per se, at least the Commercial Bank per se in Thailand. Now I have got my own issues with all this totalitarian overreach in terms of "oh we need Biometrics for you to take out 5,000 Baht, and you can't transfer more than 50,000 Baht etc." I have real problems with that. But that's a different issue than structural solvency, and structurally, I think the Thai Commercial Banking system is quite solvent. In fact I would trust it more than most of the banks in the West frankly, not least of which again everybody seems to be forgetting, Silicone Valley Bank went belly up only recently; that wasn't a Thai Bank, that wasn't an Asian Bank. Also, the underlying economies out here in Asia are actually based on real value production rather than hyper-financialized nonsense that many of the Western economies are now increasingly based on. 

Now getting more to the point and more to the point about the Thai Baht and the thumbnail, that great line from that Yakuza in that clip - and I actually urge folks to go into the description to that clip and view it for yourselves - it's a great scene. You can watch it divorced of the whole show; it's just a well-acted scene, and the actor that plays the Yakuza is completely unarmed. There are like six people pointing guns at him and he just bows and walks out of the room. It's one of the most, for lack of a better term, gangster moments I have ever seen. It's just like wow this guy, he's fearless sort of thing. But I just love the line where he says, "we're not going anywhere". It's just calm. Well that's the Thai Baht. The Thai Baht is not going anywhere, and quite honestly, if I'm looking at currencies that I would want to be denominated in, especially out here in Asia, the Thai Baht would be high on my list whether I lived in Thailand or not, and the reasoning for that is many fold, one of them being we have an entire very vibrant gold market here in Thailand. Gold is immediately fungible to Thai Baht currency, cash on the barrel, in Thailand. You go down to Yawarat, down Chinatown, I mean that's like the Wall Street of gold. No problem getting in and out of gold in Thai Baht; that's the first thing. Another one is look, Thailand has got an actual vibrant economy. It makes things; it adds value in the value chain. 

Now look, again everybody is going to be affected by energy shocks possibly that are emanating from the situation in the Middle East. But that being said, I don't think that that is reason to think that the Thai Baht is any more volatile than any other currency, especially in the Southeast Asia region. When looking at any other place there isn't any other place I'd rather live - that is why I live here - but also, in terms of currency, I think you can be well assured that going to any gold shop or to buy anything with the Baht, I don't see anything catastrophic happening in the Thai Baht any time soon. So the thing to take away from this video, again much like the thumbnail, I don't think the Thai Baht is going anywhere.