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We have done a lot of videos lately regarding Banking in Thailand especially in the context of things like Retirement Visas, Americans and issues associated specifically with Americans looking to bank in Thailand as well as those looking to come live in Thailand or do business in Thailand and they need banking facilities. We have done a number of videos on that and in one of the videos we made recently, there was a comment on that video and I thought it was worth making a video on its own about.

Quoting directly: "Hi Ben, I keep the majority of my money outside LOS, Land of Smiles", (that is Thailand), "we are on Elite Retirement Visas and transfer only the minimum funds into a Thai account annually to comply. All our transactions etc. are done from our International Banking Accounts, very minimal to no fees to do so. Our money is very safe in our European, tax-free, fully insured, guaranteed neutral country," - which neutral country? I'm curious to know what country that might be. If they are presuming Switzerland, they don't have neutrality anymore after they threw in their lot on this whole Ukraine thing, so you can actually go look that up. I think the neutrality of Switzerland isn't exactly what it once was. Quoting further: "We have done this and will continue to do so because to put millions in an Asian Bank, other than a Singaporean Bank would be tantamount to fiscal suicide." 

Well you know, do what you want. I do get look different some people have different comfort levels with Banking and when we are talking about millions and millions of dollars, okay and I would even argue even putting it all in one place is probably not necessarily the best idea. That being said, I am not any kind of financial expert. I occasionally comment on economics and International finance especially at the sort of nation state level but I myself don't, especially at a micro level, I am not at all someone who is qualified to give financial advice, quite honestly. 

That said, I see this frequently, this notion that Thai Banks are somehow risky and people forget that as bad as things got in '97 and yes there were Bank shutdowns and things of this nature but Thailand went to the wall to keep their currency exchangeable on the open exchange rate and in the aftermath of '97, went to great pains to inoculate the banking system from further problems down the road. I would actually argue of all countries, there's actually a book by Jim Rickards, I can't remember which one it is, he has a series he calls his Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, one of the books is called The Death of Money - there's four books in the series and in one of them he actually talks about Thailand specifically and that it changed a great deal from 1997 going over to - and I lived through the latter half of this here in Thailand where it kind of seemed to culminate or come to kind of it seems the arc kind of ended in 2017, so starting in 1997 Thailand had to take extraordinary measures to shore up its banking system, shore up its currency and then open itself up to free-trade to get foreign reserves into Thailand in order to achieve those goals. At about the 10-year mark, so call it about 2007 right around the time I came in to Thailand, the pendulum started to swing and at first it was a very subtle change but you saw it sort of culminate out in the latter half of the 2010s, 2017 – ‘18 – ‘19 going into 2020 where Thailand needed to - in a sense it became the whole ‘beggar thy neighbour’ thing - where Thailand needed to inflate its currency against the Dollar especially, in order to remain competitive in the export and tourism markets which are kind of the binary if you will attractors of foreign capital into Thailand, not to mention foreign direct investment and those kinds of things. But long story short, just the functional day to day economy, export and tourism brings in the bulk of Thailand's foreign exchange. During that time period Thailand again sort of inoculated itself.

Now I personally, again millions and millions, or my entire life savings to be placed entirely in one Thai Bank, I don't know that that is necessarily a good idea, but I personally have never particularly worried about banking in Thailand especially over amounts that are, call it less than anything that would be "FDIC insured" in the United States so $250,000 or less in a Thai Bank Account or multiple Thai Bank Accounts that maybe your better alternative is to use multiple accounts, but I wouldn't worry greatly about less than that amount of money in Thailand especially. I think the Banking System is perfectly sound with regard to that. 

Meanwhile, I see all the real problems, again I am a lay person when it comes to economics and international finance, Central Banking, but I have read up on this over the years quite a bit. My personal concerns are not with the Asian Banking system and again this notion ‘well Singapore is head and shoulders better than Thailand’, well whatever, have your own opinion, I don't really necessarily buy that. If I was picking between Singapore and Thailand, I am going to bank in Thailand because I live in Thailand. Now again different strokes for different folks, I get it; different people have different opinions on the topic. Leaving that aside, I mean when I look at the Western Banking System, especially in Europe, and okay let's presume this neutral country is Switzerland, it might not be but let's say it is, have you seen what has been going on with the major mergers of the Swiss banks and everything? I mean you have got UBS, and Credit Suisse and all of this stuff going on over there, I mean it doesn't look great is all I am saying. Now I'm not trying to be Chicken Little and say the sky is falling, but I have got to tell you, I sleep pretty peacefully at night knowing that I am banking in Thailand when I think about the other alternatives throughout the world.