Abhisit slams government over Central Bank

[MrPlum]

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/2 ... virabongsa

I'm not up to speed on the 1997 Thai financial crisis, so didn't know there was a huge outstanding debt. These comments caught my eye.

Abhisit..

"Mr Virabongsa should know that the BoT is an autonomous organisation. Foreign governments all give autonomy to their central banks so they can oversee financial and economic stabiity in their country."


"The ministers and politicians are [elected] by the people, while the central bank isn't. Yet, it tries to cause mistrust towards politicians, which is contrary to democracy..."

Does the Central Bank here influence politics?

[PeteC]

This issue has had an impact on exchange rates since it started about two weeks ago. That's an assumption on my part, but both the Dollar and Pound Sterling has been strengthening. Perhaps all this debt and who is going to be responsible, and the additional expenditures coming about because of the floods, have the markets nervous. Pete

[hhfarang]

^ The dollar has reached it's highest point in several months today (nearly 32)!

[icebear]

The 1.1 trillion bath stems from 1997 financial crises. The government assisted in bailing out financial institutions and bank at that time and accumulated such a dept.

The annual interest is approx. 40 billion baht.

Now, the new government pushed the responsibility of this debt to the bank of Thailand, in order to better service their own giving-to-people-schemes in a very convenient way.

They also want to tax the banks some more to share part of this scheme. We now have to keep a close eye on the safeguard of our own money in the banks, as probably the guarantee will go down as well.

Surely, the opposition, as well as the banks are not happy with this decision, but as they have a sizable majority, they can do as they please. Unless they have to widen the roads for the new sit-in!

[Takiap]

I know nothing about this sort of thing, but I would guess the BOT does have some influence over the government. After all, the BOT is in the money business, and we all know what that means, not only here but in other countries as well.


I wish i did understand more about these matters, because then maybe I'd be able to understand how and why banks can do whatever they please, and get away with it.



Another irony................I've heard many Thais say Thaksin got Thailand out of debt, so surely there shouldn't be a trillion baht debt to repay.