My Last Blog

This is my last blog in The Nation Weblog.  My family and I will be leaving Thailand for greener pastures by the end of this week.  We have decided that Thailand is no longer a good place to live.  Since the Square Face Godfather came into power in 2000 the political situation in this country has been deteriorating steadily into the cesspool it is today.

I have been blogging here off and on since about 5 or 6 years ago, before the appearance of this new format, under different pen names such as Iron Fist, Concerned Citizen, Concerned Resident, Bangkokian, Simple-Minded, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., etc.  And I have used Dalmasian for over a year now.  I want to thank The Nation and express my appreciation to them for providing this opportunity and electronic medium for all of us to express our opinions and share information with others.  It is a wonderful medium and I believe we all enjoy using it every now and then.  Yes, we all have different beliefs and perspectives on a wide variety of subjects.  That is only normal and should be allowed to flourish and even protected.

Over the years I have been criticized and ridiculed by what I would call "cyber hooligans" whenever I expressed my opinions on different subjects, be it political or economic.  That's okay with me and I do not really care one bit.  For instance, when I predicted that the "fair value" for the Baht should be between Baht 30 to Baht 31 to the US dollar, several people who claims to be experts came down hard on me and called me a lunatic, an idiot or some such names.  At that time the exchange rate was above Baht 37 to the US dollar, and everyone was saying that the exchange rate should be maintained at that level because exporters will be badly hurt.  Well, did the exchange rate appreciate to about Baht 30 to the US Dollar earlier this year?

Sure, exporters will be hurt if they do not upgrade their skills and go up-market with their products because they will never be able to continue to compete with lower-cost manufacturers in China, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Eastern Europe, etc.  Is maintaining the currency of a country at an artificially low level the only answer to the export sector's uncompetitiveness in export markets?  Is forcing other sectors of the economy to continue to subsidize the export sector the best route to economic development for the country? 

With a population of over 60 million people Thailand has the potential to have a healthy and growing domestic market for various goods and services.  Why did successive governments not implement effective plans and programs to develop the country and upgrade the education and incomes of the people over time?  Why does the country have to continue to depend on the backward agriculture industry as the locomotive engine for growth and not diversify quickly into more sophisticated and higher technology manufactured products instead?  The answer is the lack of proper education and manpower development for the Thai people at large.

The way the government suppresses the value of the Baht was to artificially depress the Central Bank lending rate and to enforce misguided monetary policies like those made by Tarisa & Company at the Bank of Thailand.  This forces investors to get out of the Baht and invest in other financial instruments or in commodities and real estate, or even in other countries, artificially forcing the prices of these to go higher and creating asset inflation. 

Has the government thought about the welfare and interest of the millions of retirees who depends on fixed income for their survival?  Low interest rates greatly affect the income levels of these people and force them into financial hardships.  Furthermore, a weak currency translates into higher costs for imported products like crude oil, refined petroleum products, machineries, spare parts, raw materials, etc. which in turn leads to higher real inflation in the country. 

The government recently announced that Thailand's current inflation rate stands at about 9 percent, and yet the big commercial banks are only paying less than 1% interest for passbook savings accounts?  What gives here?  Why are the common Thai people, the Thai Consumers, being forced to subsidize the business sector with negative interest rates?  I would even venture to say that the "real" inflation rate is quite a bit higher than 9%, perhaps as high as 15% or more.  One does not have to be a rocket scientist to realize this.  All one has to do is look around them and see how much more they are paying now for the products and services that they are using on a daily basis than in the past to know this.  We are certainly feeling the pinch ourselves.

In closing, I want to say goodbye to all the members in this Weblog who have participated in my blogs with comments and opinions, whether they agree with my opinions or not is not important.  I may have been too opinionated and sarcastic sometimes, and I may have antagonized and offended some people during the course of blogging with my undiplomatic remarks once in a while.  I want to apologize to each and everyone that I have offended for my ugly behavior. 

One thing I hate most is for someone to delete my comments in their blogs without first letting me know why.  I think that is extremely impolite and uncalled for.  This feature should be eliminated from the blog design by the Web Editor.  Only the Web Editor should have the right to delete anything, upon request by individual bloggers, and with cause.

Goodbye, sayonara, anyong hashmika, adios, adieu, chai chien and salamat po (thank you in Tagalog) everyone.  I wish you all all happiness, prosperity and good health in the future.  I know somebody will sorely miss me because she will have no one to stab on the back repeatedly and no chance to step all over my dead body anymore!  I feel so sorry for this Isaan princess and I hope she will grow up someday and realize that she has been alienating herself from more and more other bloggers here with her attitude.  In the end she may have to blog with herself because others will not want to leave any comment in her blogs.  I certainly will not, not even after I go to Heaven!

--  Dalmasian