News
Majority of Households Straddled With a Mountain of Debt

Even before COVID-19 struck in early 2020, most Thai households were saddled with high debt. Thai workers have struggled to make ends meet for many years, resulting in a dependence on borrowing.
Global crises, such as the ongoing pandemic and its variants and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, have only deepened their debt crisis.
Political focal point
According to the National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC), household debt rose 4.2 percent to Bt14.35 trillion ($434.8 billion) in the third quarter of last year, equal to 89.3 percent of GDP.
As a result of this dire situation, opposition politicians have attacked the coalition government led by the Palang Pracharath Party.
A recent idea floated by the leader of the Kla Party, Korn Chatikavanij, to get rid of debt has sparked a huge debate among netizens.
Former Finance Minister Korn promised to work with banks to provide clean loans to entrepreneurs, such as street food vendors or farmers.
Korn’s plan calls for an interest rate as low as 2.75 percent per year for a three-year loan, and each borrower could get Bt30,000 to Bt100,000.
The suggestion comes as Korn’s party prepares to participate in the Bangkok city council elections due in May and a possible snap general election to the House of Representatives in case of a political mishap leading to the dissolution of the lower house of Parliament.
The former finance minister said it was not a far-fetched idea and that he had helped many people get out of debt when he served as finance minister between 2008 and 2011.
A number of opposition politicians have long raised the issue of high household and public debts, accusing the government of mismanaging the economy. In the event of an election, the opposition is likely to focus on the issue of house debt.
In response, the government blames COVID-19 for weighing down the economy and increasing household debt.
Factors contributing to debt
Several economists attribute the problem of indebtedness to the widening economic inequality. According to them, the vast majority of people are trapped in poverty and high debt because a small minority enjoys substantial economic gains. Another reason is slower economic growth.
Since leading the military coup in 2014 and continuing in power for a second term after the 2019 general election, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has been blamed for mismanaging the economy resulting in slower growth.
Those working as tour agents, tourist guides, hotel staff, restaurant workers, as well as taxi and bus drivers, have been adversely affected by the collapse of the tourism industry in the wake of the pandemic. For the fourth quarter last year, the NESDC reported a 3.1% decrease in employment in related tourist services.
The erosion of Thailand’s competitiveness has also hurt the country, as it faces strong competition from emerging countries such as Vietnam, which has been very successful at boosting its exports.
Experts say an aging society has also weakened consumption and also reduced the availability of productive labor.
Mortgage loans top the list
During the third quarter of last year, mortgages accounted for the largest share of household debt, at Bt4.9 trillion, followed by Bt4 trillion in consumer debt – personal loans and credit cards – and Bt2.7 trillion in small business loans. Borrowings for car and motorcycle purchases totaled Bt1.8 trillion.
The NESDC reports that small-business loans rose the most at 7.3 percent, followed by mortgages at 5.5 percent and consumer loans at 4.6 percent.
Burdened by debt
Farmers and street food vendors, as well as students from low-income families, have largely borrowed money from government subsidy schemes. The Student Loan Fund has about 5 million debtors, including their guarantors. Using a fund set up by the government, the government recently reduced the default penalty to not more than 2 percent annually for new graduates.
Due to the overall unfavorable economic conditions, helping students and their parents pay off their debts is challenging.
According to the NESDC, the unemployment rate for new graduates (those with bachelor’s degrees or higher) was 3.22 percent, much higher than the nationwide unemployment rate of 1.64 percent in the fourth quarter last year.
Manufacturers and service businesses are cautious about hiring inexperienced workers.
Teachers and police have a chronic problem with debt. Rice farmers have been suffering from low prices.
Do we need more loans to deal with debt?
Indebted families may find temporary relief by taking out more loans at a low-interest rate, but that is just debt refinancing, said Teerana Bhongmakapat, former dean of Chulalongkorn University’s economic faculty.
The most suitable solution in the medium and long term will depend on how the money will be spent, or the ability of the borrowers to repay the debt, as well as how the economy performs,” said Teerana.
The poor prospects for rice prices mean farmers will remain in debt if they continue to grow rice. Investing in tourism-related services may not be a wise decision, he said. Compared with the rosy years before the public health crisis, tourism faces an uncertain future, he said.
In light of the uncertain economic outlook for both the local and global economies, Teerana predicts that manufacturers and businesses will be cautious about new capital investments.
Uncertainty in geopolitics
Since the third quarter of last year, Thai consumers have faced rising living costs. The recent Ukrainian invasion has only exacerbated the already high energy bills.
Amidst signs that the pandemic is less severe on the health system despite the recent spike in new cases, tensions between superpower rivals are also putting a strain on the Thai economy and global economy. In response to the war in Ukraine, the US leads an alliance to impose severe economic sanctions against Russia.
Having tensions between the US, Western and Asian allies in one camp, and Russia and China in the other camp, may cause the Russian invasion of Ukraine to spread through Eastern Europe and a part of Western Europe, or even to East Asia and Southeast Asia,” Teerana said.
Due to high oil prices translating into high logistics costs and the effects of economic sanctions, the global trade sector will likely see slow growth in the next few years. Materials and grains shortages would also affect manufacturing and service sectors as well as consumers.
It is unlikely that Thai households will be able to escape debt because of uncertainty facing the Thai and global economies, he warned.
Teerana forecasts economic growth this year of around 3.5 percent, but he warns that the pace may slow in the coming years.
Source: Thai PBS

News
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.
According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.
Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.
Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.
Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.
To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.
Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.
On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.
In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.
Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

Pixa Bay
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.
TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.
When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.
And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.
Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.
A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.
Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.
But today, it feels more like reality.
Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.
SOURCE | CNN
News
2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Washington — Trump Media, The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.
The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.
The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.
The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case
Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.
Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.
Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.
The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case
That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.
The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.
SOURCE | AP
News
The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.
The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.
Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.
This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.
In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.
The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.
This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.
The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.
In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.
According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.
Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.
The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.
Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.
For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.
Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.
As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.
As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.
The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.
SOURCE: AP
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