Curse of casinos
Re: "Senate to invite PM to explain casino-entertainment complex bill", (BP, May 8).
For the latest Songkran celebration, my best friends invited me to a party at a popular Thai restaurant. It was a wonderful affair, and music was booming from a live band in the park across the street. However, one of my Thai female friends conspicuously had sent her 17-year-old son far upcountry, so he was not there.
I asked why this was so, and she pointed to her expensive watch. Her son had gone into her jewellery box and sold a similar stolen watch for about 25,000 baht behind her back.
I raise this story because that is the same impact that casinos have had on families in America. Family betrayals, addiction, mortgaging homes, embezzlement from employers, ADA issues, and massive increases in all serious crime -- including rape and homicide -- have all been involved with the casino in my hometown, thus leaving us all to ponder a simple question:
If big casinos are built in a country you live in, how will you feel when it is your watch and your own son who stole it?
Jason A Jellison
Let dialogue lead
Re: "Violence tests peace hopes", (Editorial, May 8).
In the pursuit of talks towards peace in Thailand's restive South, it is disheartening to read that the Thai authorities require that "all agreements must be in keeping with the Thai constitution". The demand for a rejection of all acts of violence is, in contrast, reasonable and right. This can be insisted on without expecting "those citizens" who find significant parts of it unjust.
Open dialogue might be a more constructive approach to peace than the outright refusal to consider some options, at least for discussion to get the peace process moving forward.
Felix Qui
Rigged for the rich
Re: "Foreign investment to be liberalised with shakeup of law", (BP, May 5).
The draft Financial Hub Act, as approved by the Thai cabinet, addresses a financial services sector which is dominated by highly sophisticated corporate investors who play the derivatives markets and provide support by financing derivatives trading internationally using specialised trading software not readily accessible to the general public.
Liberalising this market sector to entice foreign traders to enter Thai markets by reducing regulatory burdens is intended to create an artificial increase in GDP and attract foreign capital inflows. Estimates suggest the measure could produce a modest increase of 0.1% - 0.3% over a 5-year period.
The downside of the proposed change is that gains will be concentrated among a tiny, wealthy, and exclusive group, thus increasing the already excessive inequalities that are endemic in Thai society. Furthermore, a derivatives market without strict oversight will increase systemic risk by encouraging speculative trading, thereby increasing volatility, which, during already volatile market conditions, could dramatically decrease GDP by as much as 1%-3%. Also worth noting is that overlaps between the SEC, the Bank of Thailand and the new Financial Hub Committee have not been fully considered, and discretionary powers are not specifically limited.
Where are the rigorous quantitative studies based upon models designed for Thailand's unique economic conditions, which show a positive risk versus reward benefit? Is it superior to a broad liberalisation of the foreign business act and foreign ownership, which would reciprocate what is given to Thai citizens in many other nations throughout the world?
Essentially, this is just another measure created by an elitist bunch of wealthy politicians and bankers designed to increase their power and wealth and that of their enablers at the expense of the rest of us.
Michael Setter
