Trump's twilight - Bangkok Post
Re: "Trump says in interview that he will accept election results", (Online, Nov 4).
While the midterm elections in the United States are yielding fruit from an election fought with vitriol, anger and frustration among the voters, President Donald Trump has come to the moment of truth that his presidency for the next two years will be painful, and at his age, the fire and rage of his greener years will morph into lame duck passivity.
The America as we have known it for the past 50 years will look very different in the near future. The agenda of resentment and rejection of the blacks, Hispanics, and minority faiths will turn into tolerance, acceptance and hopefully coexistence in America. The fabled melting pots of cultures that America has been known to call itself will have to be the accepted reality if democracy is to survive, albeit with more nuanced tones of the liberal, leftists and inclusivism as the new norms.
The egalitarian vision of democracy, which the French Revolution of 1789 and the American Independence of 1776 will now have to be reexamined under the iconoclastic lens of the Jan 6, 2021 putsch on the Capitol, the re-election of Trump as a felon to the presidency of the United States and the cover-ups of the Epstein files, the cryptocurrency conspiracies, the brazen exoneration of the billionaires and the super-rich oligarchs through tax exemptions.
Democracy is now wounded; the middle class and poor in America are the new poverty-stricken classes, and the senseless attacks against Iran and through Iranian counterattacks on the neighbouring Islamic countries under the pretext of securing oil markets and containing the demonic tendencies of Iran will be written indelibly in history books as deteriorative blows to democracy itself.
Added to the sin-lists of democratic America is the irrational support of the Trump administration for Israel's onslaughts on Iran in a futile attempt to change its regime and the shameless support of America for Russia in its aggression against Ukraine and the resultant alienation of Nato allies. The "wild west" vision of Trump's designs to attach Greenland, Canada and the Gulf of Mexico and the reprehensible capture of NicolΓ‘s Maduro and the strangulation of Cuba's energy, subjecting it to blackouts and social pain, are unpardonable in the ideals of democracy and religious edicts themselves.
Western Democracy, as typified by America, is dying, and if it is to rise again, will its rise betoken a Halloween rainbow or the unquenchable fires of Hades?
Re: "Strict rules in place", (PostBag, Nov 3), "Watching brief", (PostBag, Nov 2) & "Foreign investment in Thai stocks set to rebound", (Business, Oct 27).
Delta stock, a solid company, has been the most actively traded stock here for a long time.
But it is now down about 50% compared to just 3 months ago.
Yet there are no reports of any forced-margin selling.
Forced margin-selling levels are determined by the stock exchange, not the brokers, and its failure to enforce them was a key reason for the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
The worst ever, I know I was there.
Back then, 56 finance and finance-and-securities companies were permanently closed by December 1997, and about 22 of them held brokerage licences.
I presume that we just have to take Mr James Debenture's word that it's being properly followed now, as he so claims.
