Word: thai
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Hype the small. Work begins on a U.S.-Thai free trade agreement! Joint statement on terror to be issued! All good things but getting the Thai agreement won't be easy in a nation with a more protectionist Congress and a wary textile industry. Joint statements are swell and the edging of APEC from an economic group to more of a security group is intriguing but in the end it can't matter that much...
...Last night was the Royal Barge Procession on Bangkok's main river. The prosaic name doesn't do justice to the event. TV probably doesn't either. Flower decorated candles were sent by the thousands down the river, other lights were sent aloft by balloons like magical fireflies. Elaborate Thai boats, rowed by brightly costumed Thai oarsman, went past the leaders. The fireworks befit a city that treated the APEC summit like it had won the Olympics. (The host country rotates each year...
...that when the government eventually stops pumping in money, whenever that is, the economy will collapse." Meanwhile, the country's economic success has diverted attention from Thaksin's more controversial policies, including this year's deadly crackdown on drug dealers. "This country is going backward, not forward," says a Thai human-rights worker in Bangkok. "The government is giving people money with one hand while taking their liberties away with the other...
...Back in the capital city, other pillars of the Thaksinomics miracle may be weakening as well. Aggressive lending policies by Thailand's state-owned banks, together with tax breaks to developers, have fueled a Bangkok real estate boom among Thai buyers. But some foreign investors who rushed into Thailand to snap up foreclosed properties after the 1997 crash are now selling, convinced that the market has topped. "Three years ago we had properties on our books that no one would touch," says a Bangkok-based real estate investor. "Now we are getting offers you wouldn't believe...
...Wacharee, the IT consultant. Like many in Thailand, she views the favorable conditions created by the Thaksin government as a second chance at prosperity, one she doesn't intend to squander. "I'm starting a business that I know will work," she says. "I'll be contributing to the Thai economy. Imagine, 18 months ago I didn't even have a future. Now I'm thinking of getting rich...