Word: baht
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...corpses onto his desk: an Englishman fished out of a well; a German who was attacked by a shark, huge gouges taken from his arms and legs. Phronakson arrests about 10 foreigners a month, usually for drug possession. The word among foreigners is that for a 70,000 baht fine, about $1,800, the Thais will deport you rather than imprison you. As for the Canadian currently being held in the second-floor lock-up: according to detectives, he's ingested too much lamphong, a locally grown intoxicating flower that causes vivid hallucinations and can cause permanent psychological damage. They...
...conventional wisdom is that the economic anxiety now gripping much of the world has its roots in the collapse of Thailand's currency, the baht, in July 1997, after investors discovered that Thailand's economic boom was built on a base as solid as a bowl of pad Thai noodles. But the roots actually reach back further, to Black Monday, Oct. 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones industrial average shed 22.6% of its value in a single day. The market, of course, rebounded--and how. But at the time, professional investors thought U.S. stocks were due for a decade...
...hedge-fund manager, I use leverage sparingly and don't buy any instrument whose price can't be found in the Wall Street Journal. I bet on stocks that my research shows to be under- or overvalued, not on the direction of the French yield curve or the Thai baht. I play defense by betting against stocks that are too expensive, usually by buying put options--in essence, borrowing shares that I can repay at a profit after the price declines...
...sweep of the political breakdown is astonishing. In Thailand, where the disintegration of the baht one year ago set off the tidal wave, the Prime Minister presided over a spectacularly corrupt regime. General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, a former army chief turned politician, wasted billions propping up ailing finance companies owned by political cronies. When the currency crumbled under the pressure, he chose to throw good money after bad in a futile attempt to avoid a humiliating devaluation. Malaysia's cantankerous, 72-year-old Premier Mahathir Mohamad, strongman for 17 years, ran a one-man show with total control over the country...
...currency speculators, having knocked off Asia's weaklings, such as the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit, are now taking on the region's Godzillas: the Japanese yen, the Hong Kong dollar and the Chinese renminbi. The three are relatively stable, buttressed by huge economies and, in the case of the renminbi and the HKD, by solid "pegs" to the U.S. dollar that the Chinese government has pledged to defend--even at tremendous national cost...