Good afternoon,

The long-awaited rail link between Thailand and Laos seems set finally to open on March 5^th, which will be Thursday by my calculations. The rail link will join Nong Khai in the northeast with the Lao border town of Thanaleng (and presumably with capital Vientiane in due course). It will be the only working railway in Laos, although hopefully more will follow.

Rice farmers are threatening to block national highways if the right-wing government goes ahead with its plan to cut the subsidy price for rice from 12,000 to 10,000 baht per tonne. Subsidies are widely used in Thailand and many other Asian countries to provide a baseline of income for poor people whose vulnerability to external economic shocks means that changes in commodity prices can plunge them into terrible penury (such as, for example, during an ongoing economic crisis). While subsidies are not a perfect way to achieve this goal, cutting the rice subsidy now seems to be a terrible mistake.

The Kasikorn Research Centre is predicting that the Thai economy will contract by about 1.5% this year – which is a much more pessimistic but realistic projection than those coming from the government, especially the hopeless out of her depth Commerce Minister, whose experience in running a ‘massage parlour’ does not appear to have equipped her well for politics. Things will get worse before they get better – they may not get better, of course. Despite governments around the world doing more or less the right thing in following Keynesian ideas to stave off depression, matters are still not getting better and confidence is not returning (it is tempting to blame people making the markets for this). Eventually, it appears, large scale nationalization will be required on a permanent or temporary basis.

My review of Slavoj Zizek’s Violence has been published at Bookideas, as has my review of Kenzaburo Oe’s Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids. One of my other blogs has a comprehensive list of things what I wrote, for those who might be interested.

Back tomorrow.