Quote Originally Posted by ltnt View Post
^Sad but true. Same all over the country. The banker's are giving money away.

If you're a Thai its open season on loans. PT has opened the flood gates to hell. 97's collapse will be nothing compared to the coming one.
It's all big picture stuff, all the show of doing the right thing by rubber farmers, rice or cassava is just show.

Rubber prices have nothing to do with supply in the long term really, most of the worlds rubber is made from oil, 65% synthetic, 45 % natural. You can up the prices short term, but if manufactures of tyres etc see a long term increase, they can and will switch to synthetic.

Banks and the big players are not stupid,they know that the peons can't
keep up the payments, but they have land. Government has been out giving charnotes to what was once crown land, collateral, it can be sold to pay the debt.

What took 100s of years in Europe will be done in 20 here, that car is worth 10 rai of good rice land. When the car and the land are gone, the land will be owned by the big players and the family will have to get jobs. No more hammocks, no more lazy life, 50, 60 hour working weeks, living in a concrete box near a factory in some city.

Credit here or in the west is just the same as what was called bonded servants 300 years ago. Once you sign for that car, it may only say 6 years, but you have signed a deal with the devil and he owns you for the rest of your life.

I left the world to be free, not owned by the banks, but it seems the system is catching up on me and fast.
When I came here 10 or 11 years ago the village had 2 pickup trucks, mine and the village head, where once water buffalo slept under stilt huts a new silver pickup now lives and there are few buffalo left. Jim