タイは日本型不況へ突入?!
老齢化社会が進み、日本化が避けられないとのこと。
日本はバカな日銀が株価を潰した。日銀はシナ中銀よりずっとバカだ。シナは株が下がりそうになったら、取引を最小限に抑えた。売ると罰されるので売れず、株価は暴落しなかった。日銀や地価税や総量規制の財務省はバブル紳士を何人殺したか?疫病神が日銀であり、日本の財務省だ。
おそらく、タイ中銀(BOT)は日本の財務省ほど無能ではないだろう。タイ人は狡猾で名より実を取る。
公共投資は2017年に1.2%減だったようだが、今は必要ない。必要になればタイはいくらでもやる。日本の無能・財務省とは違うのだ。金利の下げ余地も残している。2015年4月以来、タイは利下げを実施していない。
NINJA300は風見鶏・タイは阿呆の財務省や日銀総裁を抱え続けた日本よりもよほど優秀だと思っている。(笑)
The next Japan is not China but Thailand
Once the wildest of emerging markets, Thailand is ageing fast. Its economic policymakers need to change course.
タイに老齢化が迫っている。
TWENTY years ago Thailand was the most torrid of emerging markets. After a spell of overheated growth and wide current-account deficits, it had exhausted its foreign-exchange reserves and lost its currency’s peg to the dollar. In the aftermath, inflation approached 10% and the Bank of Thailand (BoT) struggled to restore confidence in the baht. In a widely cited paper by Romain Rancière of the University of Southern California and two co-authors, Thailand was used as a stark illustration that dynamism and danger, fast growth and occasional crises, went hand in hand.
タイは20年前にバーツ危機を経験した。
A few of today’s emerging markets can still set the pulse racing—Turkey, for example, has combined breakneck growth with double-digit inflation and a worrying slide in the lira. But Thailand is not one of them. Private investment expanded by only 1.7% last year. Thailand’s sovereign bonds yield less than America’s. Inflation is once again a worry, not because it is too high, but because it is so stubbornly low. Consumer prices rose by only 0.8% in March, according to figures released this week. Inflation has remained below the BoT’s target range of 1-4% for 13 months in a row. Core inflation, excluding raw food and energy, has been below 1% for almost three years.
タイのインフレ率は低いとしているが、生活実感としてはそうではない。
“It’s Japan,” says one veteran observer of Thailand’s economy. “It’s got Japan’s demographics from 25 years ago, [and] it’s on the Japanese path of zero inflation, very low interest rates and a big current-account surplus.” By 2022 Thailand will be the first developing country to become an “aged” society, according to the BoT, with more than 14% of its population over 65. The proportion of elderly is rising faster in Thailand than in China.
人口動態は25年前の日本と似ているし、低インフレも似ている。タイは2022年までに途上国で最初の老齢社会を迎える。人口の14%が65歳以上になるのだ。
But a grey future is no excuse for a sedentary present. Thailand’s demography should instead impart a sense of economic urgency. The country should be investing in infrastructure and machinery to ensure that tomorrow’s smaller workforce is well equipped to provide for a large population of pensioners.
Unfortunately, Thailand’s economic policymakers also exhibit some of the macroeconomic passivity that once paralysed Japan. The BoT has not cut interest rates since April 2015. At the BoT’s most recent meeting one member even voted for an increase, lest people grow too accustomed to easy finance.
This conservatism runs deep. The BoT was founded in 1942, shortly before wartime hyperinflation that left a lasting impression on Thai policymakers. The central bank’s first governor liked to cite Weimar Germany as an example of what could go wrong if price stability were neglected. The bank’s longest-serving boss, Puey Ungphakorn, believed that the money supply should not, as a rule, grow more than two to three percentage points faster than GDP. “In his view, economic stability was more desirable than rapid growth,” write Peter Warr and Bhanupong Nidhiprabha in “Thailand’s Macroeconomic Miracle”, published in 1996.
Thailand might be worried about America’s response to further monetary easing, which would help reverse the baht’s recent strength. America will decide this month whether to label any of its trading partners “currency manipulators”. Thailand is the only country in Asia that meets all three of its criteria (a $20bn trade surplus with America, a big current-account surplus overall and sizeable reserve accumulation), points out Capital Economics, a consultancy. But Thailand is probably too small to attract much interest, let alone ire, from Washington.
In the absence of monetary easing, Thailand must rely on more expansive fiscal policy. Unfortunately public investment, which shrank by 1.2% last year, has been beset by backtracking and delays. Only in December did workers break ground on a long-awaited high-speed rail project linking Thailand, Laos and China.
Thailand is also moving a little closer to Japan in its growing antipathy to immigration. The government last year imposed tough penalties on illegal migrants, many of them from Vietnam and Myanmar, who are viewed as stealing jobs, not rejuvenating an ageing workforce.
Thailand is keener to import spenders. Receipts from foreign tourists rose by 11.7% in 2017, boosting growth against a backdrop of weak domestic demand. The country is justly famous for sparkling beaches, pulsating nightlife and beguiling culture. Now the tourism authority wants visitors to discover its “new shades”. In economics, Thailand’s new shades are rather drab.