Thread: Coup 2014 !!!! : Military 'takes control' in Thailand

Originally Posted by Humbert

Originally Posted by koman

The Bahtski seems to be holding up quite well

The USD selling rate is now 32.99 which is the weakest the baht has been in quite a while.

Yes it has weakened; but nowhere near the extent that many were predicting....at least not yet. The Baht has been weakening for some time now, but mostly because of the actions of the BOT I think. It's still nowhere near the levels we were used to in the good old days.....

Just looked....the mid market rate for the US$ is 32.69.....and the Baht has only moved in smallish increments against most other major currencies......nothing out of the ordinary shifts we see between currencies.

Originally Posted by Tom Sawyer

Originally Posted by pickel

Prayuth played his cards well. He only delayed the inevitable though. Hopefully his payments on the rice scheme and, so far, treating the reds the same as the yellows will keep things calm.

Funny how he managed to find the money to pay farmers only three or four days after a coup, when a legitimate government was STOPPED from making payments to farmers at every turn. What fucking bullshit - the farmers are happy to get paid of course, but they're not stupid..

You totally discount the concept that the junta actually wanted to pay the farmers where as yingluck did not.

Originally Posted by Albert Shagnastier

At least they aren't murdering millions around the planet for no other reason than power and money like your mob.

OVERBLOWN RHETORIC ALERT!

Maybe without thaksins and others thieving 30++% under the table tax on everything, there will be more money jingling into the governments coffers this year and less need for tax increases.

It will be interesting to see if levels of corruption and cream offs do actually change over the following few months.

Originally Posted by taxexile

It will be interesting to see if levels of corruption and cream offs do actually change over the following few months.

How will you know?

Damaging, monumental scale corruption isn't the same as the police levying extra fines - and is less visible.

Originally Posted by koman

Originally Posted by Humbert

Originally Posted by koman

The Bahtski seems to be holding up quite well

The USD selling rate is now 32.99 which is the weakest the baht has been in quite a while.

Yes it has weakened; but nowhere near the extent that many were predicting....at least not yet. The Baht has been weakening for some time now, but mostly because of the actions of the BOT I think. It's still nowhere near the levels we were used to in the good old days.....

I'm hoping it doesn't weaken more as my missus gets paid in baht and sends over what she can at the moment so we can be in a better financial position when she joins us, which is also the ONLY reason she stayed behind and that plan and sacrifice is now being scuttled by ignorance, egotistical and infantile power plays of a third world country and it's "leaders". Based on what's currently happening once again there can no longer be a debate on whether or not Thailand IS 3rd world..

Originally Posted by The Ghost Of The Moog

Originally Posted by taxexile

It will be interesting to see if levels of corruption and cream offs do actually change over the following few months.

How will you know?

Damaging, monumental scale corruption isn't the same as the police levying extra fines - and is less visible.

Oh it'll change all right!! No oversight what-so-ever so some pockets are definitely going to get lined, "a rose by any other name". Only more thorns and more pricks. As bad as it was before the 2 protagonists were eager to find and expose corruption to bring the other down. Who's going to do that now? Even the press is, for all intents and purposes, sidelined and muted so there's not even anyone to report it to or a voice to be heard.

Originally Posted by The Ghost Of The Moog

Damaging, monumental scale corruption isn't the same as the police levying extra fines - and is less visible.

Oh I dunno. The monumental corruption in Thailand's courts was pretty visible in recent months.

One of my staff has a male relative who recently passed an army officers' exam. Now if he wants promotion it will cost him ThB 100,000. I don't doubt it will be business as usual in the commercial sector too.

Is Facebook blocked? I am unable to log in this morning.

Originally Posted by Thormaturge

The fact is that there simply wasn't the money to pay farmers from rice sales, both because of a decline in value of stocks and failure, for whatever reason, to sell the stuff. So the only option was to borrow, and repay the money from this year's tax revenue, which PT were prevented from doing.

Ahh but they magically found the money for all the infrastructure projects being kicked off in red land over the last 18 months, making sure their regional captains got their graft money.

Thaksin and the puppets rarely ever actually deliver anything that they promise in the run up to elections, other than debt for the people that vote for them. They always deliver that.

^
2011 they were confronted with floods of biblical proportions. Hardly PT's fault.

By 2013 Thailand had an economy producing substantial tax revenues which the Democrats and their backers, with help from the courts, hoped to plunder. Sadly for them the military have grabbed the money and will have a whale of time throwing it about for a short while. Nobody is going to be in a hurry to be left holding the baby in the fourth quarter of 2557 BE as the money runs out and the economy remains flat. September election, before all the price hikes become inevitable, anyone?

Taken from the Guardian.

Thailand militarisation is symptom of accelerating global system failure
Crippling fossil fuel dependency, climate volatility, rocketing debt levels are propelling protests, radicalising the state
Thailand coup
Thai police commando stand guard outside the Army Club before Thai former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra arrives to report to Thailand's ruling military in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, May 23, 2014. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) Photograph: Sakchai Lalit/AP
Military coups in Thailand are nothing new. But the latest seizure of power by army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha underscores the risks to democracy when governments consistently fail to deal adequately with the complex convergence of systemic crises.

Although Chan-ocha has said he is merely seeking to "restore order" in reaction to escalating protests that have seen the deaths of 28 and injury of 700, informed observers point out that the declaration of martial law appears to have been calculated to benefit the coup instigators.

Whatever the case, the opportunity to impose authoritarian rule has emerged in the context of escalating political instability. But few recognise that the driving force of this instability is not simply 'political infighting', but the inexorable intersection of global trends that affect us all.

Three years ago, a prescient editorial in Thailand's English language daily, The Nation, noted that global economic growth was indelibly tied to the abundant availability of cheap oil. Pointing out the links between domestic oil scarcity in countries like Egypt beset with surging social upheaval, the editorial diagnosed the problem as follows:

"The recent sharp rise in food prices has triggered riots in Egypt and other less-developed countries. Higher energy prices have also added on to the inflationary pressure. The poor are the most vulnerable sector to fluctuations in food and energy prices. Governments thus have to come up with subsidy measures for food and energy."

What does this imply for Thailand? The editorial continued:

"The Thai inflation rate is very sensitive to higher oil prices, which will drive up local transport and production costs. As a heavy importer of energy, the rising oil price could derail the Thai economy and drain our reserves if we're not careful."

Indeed, Thailand is a net energy importer. As Southeast Asia's second-largest consumer of energy, with total domestic consumption at 108.7 million tonnes of oil equivalent (TOE), the slow demise of cheap energy sources exacerbated by rising demand from India and China has posed a growing challenge.

Thailand's Ministry of Energy has not been entirely asleep at the wheel. In 2003, a government report acknowledged that the country's "high dependency on imported energy will make Thailand at risk of energy supply disruption and volatility of energy prices, apart from a substantial foreign currency loss for the imports of energy." The report urged the government to embark on a strategy to diversify energy supply sources and ramp up domestic renewable energy investment.

But the pace of transition has been too slow, with "little change to the status quo" - and so far the poor, especially rural farmers who have played an increasing role in recent protests, have been most affected.

We need to call a spade a spade: Thailand's deteriorating economy is driven significantly by its fossil fuel dependence. In 2013, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that Thailand's economy was especially vulnerable to external shocks, disruptions to its energy supplies and oil price escalation. High international oil prices would push up the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

It's happening now. Thailand's Ministry of Commerce stated that the CPI had risen by 2.11% in March due to "increases in food and energy prices" rising further to 2.45% in April. The prices underpinning inflation in particular affected "rice, pork, cooking gas and vegetable oil."

Welcome to the future. The IEA also projected that Thai energy consumption in Thailand will rise by 75% over the next two decades, corresponding to a dramatic increase in its oil import bill, which could climb to $70bn - three times the current level.

Also to blame for current inflation are "higher electricity rates and a weaker baht", along with "droughts in some areas" that could result in "shortages of agricultural products."

Erratic climate impacts on Thailand are already playing havoc with the economy. Between 1981 and 2007, annual mean temperature in Thailand rose by 1C. Over the last 50 years, the frequency and levels of precipitation have decreased, even while scientists expect that this will accompany an increase in intensity of extreme weather, storm surges and floods.

This is undermining Thailand's position as one of the world's largest rice exporters. Over 40% of Thai citizens depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Widespread floods in October 2010 affecting almost three million people led to a loss in rice production of about 0.7 million tonnes. Droughts in the same years sunk water levels to 15% of their total capacity, also debilitating rice production.

Devastation caused by flooding in 2011 led to a halt in planned government expenditures, slashing domestic consumption which accounts for about half of economic output. The flooding also destroyed 14% of rice paddies. This increased economic pressure on government to remunerate affected farmers and back an unsustainable 'rice mortgage scheme' guaranteeing higher-than-market prices to export rice. The result of that, coupled with competition with other major rice exporters, has been a decline in rice exports and a drop in government revenues.

As the rice programme has benefited mostly rich farmers while miring the government in increasing debt, impoverished farmers excluded from the dividends have increasingly seen little choice but to take to the streets.

Faced with these burgeoning economic challenges, struggling farmers, as well as low wage workers, have also ended up mired in debt. Since the 2008 financial crisis, there has been an explosion of private borrowing, such that Thailand's ratio of household debt to GDP has increased from 55 per cent to 80 per cent since 2009. As rampant debt, fuelled by rising living costs (underpinned in turn by energy inflation), has stoked political grievances and economic uncertainty, unemployment is pitched to rise to 600,000 - the highest in a decade.

Recent research has shown that high-debt countries suffer from lower economic growth. In particular large levels of household debt drag growth down.

Such accelerating debt is widening Thai inequality. The top 10 per cent of landowners in Thailand own 61 per cent of total title land. The income share of the most affluent 20% of the population is about 54% compared to only 5% among the poorest 20%.

Since the 2006 coup, economic gains made by the previous Thaksin administration's rejection of failed IMF reforms have been reversed.

Top this off with the interlinked challenges of Thailand's domestic energy scarcity and intensifying climate woes, and we have all the makings of a perfect storm of systemic crises. Any government operating within the framework of conventional 'neoliberal austerity' wisdom - let alone one beleaguered with corruption - would have difficulties managing this scenario.

Operating within the conventional framework which sees each problem as separate, and reacts belatedly to political disturbances on the shallow surface of current affairs, we can't see the forest for the trees. Thailand's crisis is about more than internal corruption, political repression and economic mismanagement - though all three of course feature in large degree. This is about the unravelling of a global paradigm of fossil fuel dependency and endless growth for its own sake.

Thailand's latest authoritarian turn is a warning to us all. Until we are ready to work together to address the structural and systemic context of such interconnected crises, we risk rendering the reactionary resort to state-militarisation an inevitable 'final solution' to keep the lid on a new age of unrest.

Originally Posted by Tom Sawyer

Originally Posted by pickel

Prayuth played his cards well. He only delayed the inevitable though. Hopefully his payments on the rice scheme and, so far, treating the reds the same as the yellows will keep things calm.

Funny how he managed to find the money to pay farmers only three or four days after a coup, when a legitimate government was STOPPED from making payments to farmers at every turn. What fucking bullshit - the farmers are happy to get paid of course, but they're not stupid..

You fail to mention the fact the payments were due before the protesters took to the streets, why they made when due?

Interesting choice for the Job.

PM

PM’s Office permanent secretary and Council of State secretary-general axed
in Politics.

Prime Minister’s Office permanent secretary Tongthong Chandrangsu and Council of State secretary-general Chukiat Rattanachaicharn were axed at the order of the National Council for Peace and Order.
In accordance with the NCPO’s orders No 27/2557 and 28/2557, Mr Tongthong is still retained as an official at the PM’s Office with the same salary. He was replaced by M.L. Panadda Disakul, the deputy permanent secretary.

Mr Chukiat was transferred to the PM’s Office with the same salary he received as the Council of State secretary-general. Appointed to fill in his place was Mr Disatat Hotrakit, the deputy secretary.

Meanwhile, NCPO ordered Mr Veerapat Priyawong, an independent academic to report to the junta on Thursday morning at the Army’s auditorium.

Get loans from the countries that owe them money then loan them the money back

Originally Posted by taxexile

Maybe without thaksins and others thieving 30++% under the table tax on everything, there will be more money jingling into the governments coffers this year and less need for tax increases.

It will be interesting to see if levels of corruption and cream offs do actually change over the following few months.

IF (note capitals) our glorious leaders manage to reduce (reduce, not eliminate) corruption, it will be no better for the economy due to the expected incompetence of huge egos believing they can run a country.

They tried it last time and ten times before that, on each occasion leaving a mess in their wake, and governments as corrupt as the one they replaced.

Originally Posted by FloridaBorn

Originally Posted by koman

Originally Posted by Humbert

Originally Posted by koman

The Bahtski seems to be holding up quite well

The USD selling rate is now 32.99 which is the weakest the baht has been in quite a while.

Yes it has weakened; but nowhere near the extent that many were predicting....at least not yet. The Baht has been weakening for some time now, but mostly because of the actions of the BOT I think. It's still nowhere near the levels we were used to in the good old days.....

I'm hoping it doesn't weaken more as my missus gets paid in baht and sends over what she can at the moment so we can be in a better financial position when she joins us, which is also the ONLY reason she stayed behind and that plan and sacrifice is now being scuttled by ignorance, egotistical and infantile power plays of a third world country and it's "leaders". Based on what's currently happening once again there can no longer be a debate on whether or not Thailand IS 3rd world..

I don't think anyone disputes that LoS is Third World, and irredeemably so; the Thai mindset simply cannot compete with that of advanced nations.

The question we were asked on the thread I believe you may be referring to, is whether Thailand is a failed state. Imho definitely not, though it seems they're still trying.

Moog, I think, as a spectacle, the principle of staying at the crease for two days for no apparent reason other than to force a draw is not one the Asian mind could embrace easily. Mai sanuk and all that and to be fair, that's why we have one day cricket and the limited over thrash.

Mind you, he knew how to treat his women. Too much lip and a swift belt across the chops was the m.o. I believe.

Originally Posted by thegent

Mind you, he knew how to treat his women. Too much lip and a swift belt across the chops was the m.o. I believe.

That, I believe, did not happen, she made it up to extort money out of him - using injuries gained in other combat. He is very popular with the ladies, if one googles 'Katy Perry' along with his name, you will see an assignation that took place only last week.

And besides, if both Reds and Royalists had accepted a draw with grafters at the crease, meticulously accumulating runs, with honours even and a degree of sportsmanship, there would not need to be recourse to tankist coups. There is no need for binary social outcomes - a draw, a tie, or play curtailed by bad light and rain are all satisfactory compromise endings.

There is no need for binary social outcomes - a draw, a tie, or play curtailed by bad light and rain are all satisfactory compromise endings.

I dont think the dinosaurs playing todays thai politics would agree. A compromise is just not cricket.

The coup represents the penalty shoot out.

Originally Posted by taxexile

The coup represents the penalty shoot out.

More like the game abandoned because protesters, paid by the umpires, dug up the pitch at Headingley.

Actually, before Thaksin, consensus was the the order of the day. Then, of course, the lower end was not a consideration but he dragged them into the equation as a means of gaining the upper hand thus securing a bigger slice of the pie than others thought merited.

The rest, as they say, is history. What this particular coup hopes to achieve by pressing the reset button is to restore an equilibrium that to a certain extent existed before the Thaksin phenomenon but out of necessity the lower end will now have to be considered.

Thai democracy is all about harmony and the maintenance of its own, peculiar, social stratification. They don't particularly care if the umpires are a a bit arbitrary from time to time. The oiks getting pissed in the cheap seats and making a noise can always be ejected from the ground if needs be and no one complains too much about that.