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Thai Buddhist Monk Relies on Karma for Lending Success

Phra Subin Paneeto, right, offers financial advice to borrower Dusit Satharalai. Mr. Dusit turned to Phra Subin’s network after struggling to pay off a high-interest loan from another lender

BAAN NA KLUEA – Buddhist monks aren’t really known for dipping into the material world of finance. Phra Subin Paneeto, though, says he felt he didn’t have much choice when he saw his neighbors near Thailand’s border with Cambodia were struggling to make ends meet.

So, in the early 1990s, he started a micro-lending operation with a few thousand baht, lending small amounts to villagers to help pay for home repairs, buy new farm machinery and pay off other, larger debts.

Today, Phra Subin’s micro-banking network has amassed about $60 million in deposits and loans.

The idea is that its 66,000 members will each contribute sums ranging from 10 baht to 500 baht, or about 30 cents to $15, a month. Each member who wishes to borrow is bundled together with three to five guarantors, and is allowed to tap more than they put in, at an interest rate of 1% to 2% a month—or less if other villagers agree. Some borrowers pay no interest.

The guarantors, who are all members of the group, are often friends, relatives or neighbors of the borrowers. Members have an incentive to be guarantors so that others will be guarantors for them when they wish to borrow money.

Half of the venture’s earnings are paid to the members at the end of each year. The rest go to a village welfare fund.

Thais have plenty of other banking options to choose from. According to the Bank of Thailand, the country’s central bank, about 90% of Thai households have access to financial services. In rural areas, government-sponsored village credit programs have lent more than $5 billion since the idea caught on in the early 2000s, making Thailand one of the biggest players in the global micro-finance scene.

Borrowers make payments on their loans from the Sajja Sasom Sab network at a Buddhist temple

Nonetheless, demand for Phra Subin’s Buddhist-flavored lending program, called Sajja Sasom Sab, continues to gain traction.

Other temples and monasteries around predominantly Buddhist Thailand have followed his example. More than 40 of the country’s 76 provinces have witnessed monks get involved in similar micro-finance projects.

The reason for Phra Subin’s continued success?

Some borrowers, depending on how well they are perceived to follow Buddhist precepts such as telling the truth or avoiding intoxicating substances, aren’t charged interest, Phra Subin says.

“Other financial institutions, they look at your financial records, assets and collateral,” he explained in a Buddhist temple in the hub of his saving network here in Trat province. “But the community will evaluate your good deeds.”

No-interest loans cut into the lender’s profit margin, but Phra Subin says that is offset by his system’s emphasis on Buddhist principles—he calls it a karmic peer-pressure system—which makes defaults virtually nonexistent.

“If you are not honest or sincere to other group members, nobody will help you when you want to borrow the money,” Phra Subin continued. “This community will force you to practice Dharma, work hard, be honest and take responsibility. Otherwise no one will want you.”

Dharma refers to the teachings of Buddha.

Other religious groups around the world have tried to tackle poverty using micro-finance. The Roman Catholic charity Caritas Manila has helped form micro-banks in the Philippines that have expanded access to credit there; its cooperative now has 20,000 members and has a repayment rate of 96%. The Catholic church has embarked on similar projects in Indonesia, where it has set up credit unions in remote areas of the archipelago, such as Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo.

In India, Hindu charities and temples have helped rural communities secure loans from banks. Indian banking regulations prohibit banks and micro-finance institutions from taking an explicitly religious approach in their lending decisions. But some Hindu groups do help, says Shantharam Pai, financial director with Shri Kshetra Dharmasthala Rural Development Project, a charitable trust that is associated with a Hindu temple in the southern state of Karnataka. His organization acts on behalf of commercial banks, as agents, to help people, mostly women, navigate the banking system and obtain loans.

By applying Buddhist precepts to its lending policies, Phra Subin’s microfinance operation in Thailand goes considerably further than its counterparts. Its supporters say that applying the concept of karma, that an individual’s actions inevitably affect them later in life, appears to reinforce the peer-pressure model that is at the root of most micro-finance programs, helping to keep the operation’s borrowers from defaulting.

The operation’s managers say there are no current defaults and the lender is in contact with all borrowers who are late on their payments. In Thailand’s commercial sector, loan defaults were about 2.16% of outstanding loans, or 278.2 billion baht in 2014.

Moreover, the more a borrower repays, the lower the interest rate will be the next month, unlike at commercial banks, which calculate interest rates at set levels.

Traditional bankers generally applaud such a system. “These forms of lending and savings promotion are typically observed in low-income communities in rural areas,” says Piyasak Ukritnukun, managing director of CFG Services Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Bank of Ayudhya.

He said larger commercial banks tend to shy away from similar lending structures “due to the relatively small loan sizes and lower interest rates coupled with high operating costs.”

There are other potential drawbacks to the less-formal village micro-finance system: Much of the Sajja Sasom Sab network’s success is bound up in the efforts of its charismatic founder, Phra Subin. Economists such as Luxmon Attapich at the Asian Development Bank say it is sometimes a problem for lenders to rely so heavily on the leadership of one person. “What if they are not around anymore?” she asked.

She and other economists say that some informal microfinance programs, while initially successful, ultimately falter because their leaders die or move away.

Still, Phra Subin’s network has been a boon to the many Thais who still don’t use the formal banking network. According to an Asian Development Bank report, more than 1.7 million Thais borrow from informal lenders, including some 335,000 who borrow from loan sharks or other unlicensed lenders.

Dusit Satharalai, for instance, borrowed some 300,000 baht with an 8% annual interest rate from an agricultural cooperative in 1992 to start a durian plantation.

The venture was slow to bear fruit, however. Twenty years later, Mr. Dusit found himself struggling to make payments and prevent his land being seized. Adding to his problems, the co-op increased his interest rate to 13% because of late payments, he said.

He borrowed money from his sister, but when she had to pay for her children’s school fees, Mr. Dusit was running out of options.

At his brother’s suggestion, Mr. Dusit turned to the Sajja Sasom Sab group in 2013, securing a 400,000 baht loan from the fund with an interest rate of 0.5% per month. After two years, he has already paid half of it back and plans to clear his debt to zero by the end of this year, including the co-op loan. Business has picked up at Mr. Dusit’s plantation, which has helped with his payments, but the lower-interest loan from the Sajja Sasom Sab has also eased his struggles.

Mr. Dusit’s niece, Panisa Satharalai, whose father borrowed 1 million baht from the fund to rebuild the family home, says she has doubled her income since then by offering home-stay accommodation and starting a catering business.

“This is a happy debt,” said Ms. Panisa. “This loan gave me a job and makes me want to get up early every morning to work hard, and it shows how united our community is. I won’t need to worry that I could not pay it back and risk losing my house and land.”

By Wilawan Watcharasakwet

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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

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.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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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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Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli, To repay $6.4 Million

Washington — The Supreme Court rejected Martin Shkreli’s appeal on Monday, after he was branded “Pharma Bro” for raising the price of a lifesaving prescription.

Martin appealed a decision to repay $64.6 million in profits he and his former company earned after monopolizing the pharmaceutical market and dramatically raising its price. His lawyers claimed the money went to his company rather than him personally.

The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is customary, and there were no notable dissents.

Prosecutors, conversely, claimed that the firm had promised to pay $40 million in a settlement and that because Martin orchestrated the plan, he should be held accountable for returning profits.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Martin was also forced to forfeit the Wu-Tang Clan’s unreleased album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” which has been dubbed the world’s rarest musical album. The multiplatinum hip-hop group auctioned off a single copy of the record in 2015, stipulating that it not be used commercially.

Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and defrauding them of millions of dollars in two unsuccessful hedge funds he managed. Shkreli was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals (later Vyera), which hiked the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after acquiring exclusive rights to the decades-old medicine in 2015. It cures a rare parasite condition that affects pregnant women, cancer patients, and HIV patients.

shkreli

He defended the choice as an example of capitalism in action, claiming that insurance and other programs ensured that those in need of Daraprim would eventually receive it. However, the move prompted criticism, from the medical community to Congress.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Attorney Thomas Huff said the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling was upsetting, but the high court could still overturn a lower court judgment that allowed the $64 million penalty order even though Shkreli had not personally received the money.

“If and when the Supreme Court does so, Mr. Shkreli will have a strong argument for modifying the order accordingly,” he told reporters.

Shkreli was freed from prison in 2022 after serving most of his seven-year sentence.

SOURCE | AP