Word: baht
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Mama San won't budge from $1,000. There's the food, the clothes, the makeup, the perfume and the condoms, not to mention the fees of the middlemen. At $1,000, she's making nothing, she says. She taps out the figure in baht on a calculator and holds it up: 43,650. You won't get a pair of 14-year-old Burmese girls for less in this town...
...streets; its economy is only the size of Ohio's. Besides (so we are told), Wall Street has long since "discounted" the prospect of a default on Argentina's sovereign debt, so there's no need to worry. On the other hand, in 1997 the collapse of the Thai baht (Thailand's economy is about as big as Tennessee's) sparked a financial crisis throughout Asia that, without decisive policy interventions from Washington, would have threatened the global economy and led to the loss of many American jobs. It wasn't B-52s that did the trick then...
...looked as if the consequences of the 1929 market crash might be contained; it was the collapse in 1931 of the Austrian bank Creditanstalt that turned a market correction into a worldwide slump. Similarly, the global financial crisis of 1997-98 started with the devaluation of the Thai baht--though Thailand's whole economy is about the size of Kentucky...
...honest mistake. Most Thais, inasmuch as they follow politics, believe Thaksin was probably guilty. Yet, in part because of his chicken-(curry)-in-every-pot populism, they are ready to forgive him in order to get on with the business of getting rich. He's promised them a million baht for every village, has told them of his One Village, One Product plan, has instituted a new micro-lending program, and he's already delivered on his pledge to offer 30-baht (60-cent) medical care to everyone in the country. No Thai Prime Minister has accomplished this much...
...wondering how he would ever provide them with a better life. His business shortcomings were not for lack of effort or seriousness?he had been using his vaunted scientific reasoning, yet every time he launched a new venture, he would be blindsided by a real-estate downturn or a baht devaluation. If you know that feeling of failure, he says, the futility of trying your best and still screwing up, you discover new strength of character and fortitude. "One of the hardest things for any man to do is to tell your wife you've failed," he says...