A little bit of a flea bite from Egypt concerning its ''foreign exchange shortage.'' One is led to wonder if the bricklaying Finance Minister's actions and policies may lead to a mirror image action having to be implemented here in dreamland Thailand at a future date.

All of you know this but for the benefit of you know who, we’ll just join up the dots.

The economy includes 50 or so billionaires, or very wealthy blokes, who make large sums from selling stuff that most of the population wants but doesn’t really need. This is stuff that doesn’t earn the country much income, apart from tax on company profits and also VAT income. But that makes the gov happy because it means it can buy more stuff that most of the population doesn’t need either, stuff likes submarines, fighter planes, aircraft carriers etc etc.

Conditions after the 1997 crash were perfect for the 50 wealthy blokes. Foreign competition was not allowed, 90% of the population earned less than 10k a month, so there was an ample supply of cheap labour, plus several of their number owned the banks, hence finance wasn’t an issue either. What could be better.

At some point after about 2010, the 50 wealthy blokes decided that the income from the native population alone wasn’t enough to satisfy the lavish lifestyles to which they were rapidly becoming accustomed. Hmm, said one, who’d just bought a foreign football club, I know, let’s get people from other countries to come here and buy our stuff. Yeah said another, who’d just bought Selfridge's, good idea that man, drinks all round.

tradingeconomics.com/thailand/tourist-arrivals

And so international tourism was born in Thailand and the 50 wealthy blokes were happy….until a decade or so later when the tourists stopped coming and that had a trickle down effect, back down the income chain.

Whoa said the 50, this is a bummer, it’s best that we each fire 30,000 peasants or so and increase all prices by 15% or more……so they all did. Whoa said gov, no tax income and no VAT, who’s going to pay for all the stuff we want and what will happen to my brown envelope each month. Not my problem said the 50, you need to fix it, most of whom were sipping tall drinks with little umbrella’s, on their yachts off Portofino and Capri. Meanwhile, the majority of the work force was sharing their daily cup of rice, excitedly looking forward to their 9,000 baht pay checks in 28 days time.

The first thing that happened was a senior business man was appointed to the role of PM. You’ll remember this is what many in the US advocated when Trump was elected, get a successful business man with hands on experience to lead the turn around….that worked out really well of course, apart from the civil war that is!

Next, the scramble was on, visa’s were abolished, prices were slashed, recreational drugs were legalised and nubile young things were dispatched to Beijing in the hope of tempting Chinese money to visit. The jury is out whether these things will be beneficial or not but I doubt that the nubile young things will be back here any time soon and who can blame them.

Oddly however, nobody has said, let’s stop being so dependent on foreign money, we’re not prostitutes who sell ourselves to foreign tourists and anyway, we want a better class of John, er tourist. Instead, the call has gone out to tax people more, to which the 50 have replied, good luck with that mate and to which the poor have said, tax what exactly? Less oddly, nobody has come up with an alternate plan to achieve independence from overseas income because that would mean causing financial damage to the 50 wealthy blokes and they’re not up for that.

The bottom line is that Plan A is increased tourist arrivals and there is no Plan B that can be controlled or managed by this country. There is a long shot that a rich widow somewhere will die and leave America 32 trillion Dollars and that the country will find a capable president aged under 60, one who is also honest and sane, but I’m not hopeful. The 50 have spoken.

Well as per usual the Thai stance is that' 'we are different.'' Indeed they are, totally uninformed, living in a bubble of a feudal society where, to question decisions are discouraged.

Sadly for those that ruin run this country they need to realise and understand they are but a pustle upon the financial issues in this world, they can and without a doubt will see Thailand being thrown into the worlds financial oceans as jetsam and as bait and food for other financial sharks.

Indeed the future is bleak in more ways than one.    Could be a big financial bang(s) coming.

Does this have all the makings of a Thai inspired SE Asian crash all over again?

One way the tax haul could be increased is to increase VAT from 7% to 8%, 7% is already very very low by comparison.

A more focussed way would be to decrease the deduction that self employed people can take for costs against profit. Currently, huge numbers of people who work for themselves deduct 60% of their income as cost overheads when the reality is the true figure is much much lower. Reduce the deduction to say 50% and the tax haul will increase, leaving those with truly higher costs to file an itemised return rather than take the blanket deduction.....nobody actually loses in that scenario but nobody gets a freebie either.