Its that time of the year again, Songkran or Thai New Year, when the majority of Thais head home for the five day holiday. And so it is that I find myself once again in my wife’s village in the far northeast of the country close to the border with Laos. This is the heart of Isaan where the nearest town is an hour’s drive on an ungraded dirt track, herds of water buffalo represent a more idyllic past, and workers still eke out a living from farming rice. The best rice in the world, they will tell you.
By and large life in our village still centres around natural cycles (the rising and setting of the sun, the onset of the wet season, meal times), local community rituals concerned with birth, marriage and death, and stories of the ancestors. In Songkran, when far-flung relatives return to the village of their youth, a frisson of anticipation hangs in the air. Isaan music echoes across the rice paddies in celebration of the new year – a time for renewal and, for many, the forlorn hope that life will get better.
I suspect the people of Isaan are like poor people everywhere; naive possibly, untouched by international affairs (indeed largely oblivious to the world beyond their immediate borders), loyal to their heritage and intensely superstitious yet good-natured, hard-working, generous and above all else determined to escape the grinding poverty that trapped previous generations.
There is one fundamental issue, however, of which they remain in the dark. Nor, I suspect, would they understand how to be outraged if they did understand that their condition is largely determined by those a world away who have a vested interest in keeping them needy, impoverished and in awe of those who wield authority.
Like millions of other poverty-stricken people around the world the underprivileged of Isaan have been gang-raped by the rich - including those close to home who pose as their allies; an entire class whose insatiable greed, lust for power and unchecked privilege allows them to plunder the environment, wage war, embed fear, sponsor corruption and injustice, and ultimately thwart a more equitable distribution of the world’s wealth.
Over the past 40 years or so meagre rural incomes here have been boosted by the young women of Isaan. Resigned to whatever life has in store for them, due in part to an ingrained moral obligation to provide for their aging parents, an entire generation of women and children have sold their bodies in the innumerable sex parlours of Bangkok and the beach resorts of Pattaya and Phuket.
By deliberately putting themselves in harm’s way these women have raised the average income here to the extent that most families now own at least one car and a tractor as well as a variety of electrical appliances including flat panel televisions, computers, stereo systems and microwave ovens.
They are no happier than before and there is a good reason for that. Unintentionally, perhaps, they have unleashed a deep-rooted envy and a desire for material possessions that was previously unheard of. At the same time, community values have been eroded to the extent that petty jealousies abound and competition between families widespread. The rites of innocence are well and truly spent in Isaan.
At this time of the year, when Isaan is in blossom and pulsing with life, I have a wild urge to share our way of life with those who could benefit from such an alternative encounter. We could call it a total-immersion awareness laboratory for incompetent and failed leaders. Employing the World Economic Forum model as our guide participants would pay their own costs. In this way we would invite princes and prelates, billionaires and industrialists, politicians and bureaucrats alike to visit our tiny community in order to witness Isaan life at first hand. Rest assured the villagers would open their hearts in friendship to such elite celebrities from the so-called civilized world.
We would entertain them and prepare a sumptuous feast in their honour, though they might still taste the dirt and the hardship. We would dress them in the finest local cloths, though they would not be immune from the dust and the heat. We would offer them our beds, though they might not sleep too well for the insect bites and the constant whirring of the electric fan. Waking early we would take them to the local Wat so that they could reflect on their own good fortune, though their future dreams might be haunted by the spectre of poverty…
I could guarantee that their time in our village would not be wasted. Hospitality would flow freely as we listened to their stories about the marriage of greed and stupidity. In return for our hospitality they could explain to my wife and her family why their annual income exceeds the combined life-time’s earnings of all the men in our village. They could put into plain words why they will not accept responsibility for industrial practices that are polluting the land and causing serious drought in this part of Isaan. They could tell us why their extravagant life-styles should not change and why Isaan villagers deserve to live in relative poverty. They might even try to clarify why they should continue to govern on behalf of us all given their evident reckless incapacity to do so.
The guest list for such an occasion would include those in the global oligarchy who have never experienced the pain and adversity that comes through inequality. If they really believe ‘the world is flat’ then they have much to learn from staying awhile in the flatlands of Isaan.
Serious learning, however, would not be the sole aim of this extravaganza. We would want to make it as joyful an affair as possible. Songkran is a time for celebration after all. In order to inject humour into the proceedings we would invite buffoons and miscreants of the first order. George W Bush of course, would be our headline guest of honour - he is such a natural comedian. George and his cronies trampled over almost every principle of democracy and human rights while committing America and its allies to chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat – all to no avail. What a hoot! Eight years spent searching every citizen at every airport for explosive tubes of toothpaste and lipstick while ignoring flaws in the US domestic economy and holes in prudential regulations the size of Texas. Now that has to take the prize… I doubt even Woody Allen could dream up such an hilarious script.
If we could track him down Alan Greenspan would also get a seat at our table simply for enabling the rich psychopaths on Wall Street to become even richer by scamming the system he was supposed to manage. Alan’s deadpan delivery and unwavering belief that the current economic crisis is some kind of unfortunate accident that could not have been predicted would be guaranteed to generate gales of laughter, even among the children here.
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Edward Liddy (current CEO of AIG) would no doubt receive standing ovations as they attempted to explain, between the guffaws, how billions of US taxpayer dollars were stuffed into propping up a company that evaded US and international regulators, posting the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history (some USD 61.7 billion) and ultimately destroying itself by chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street casino with money it didn’t have.
Then there is Joseph Cassano. He is a master at spinning a good yarn. As the Head of AIG’s Financial Products unit Cassano can tell us how he wreaked havoc at AIG, by creating a scheme of ‘naked’ credit-default swaps, without detection and right under the noses of government and international regulators. Just months before the collapse of AIG Cassano arrogantly announced to investors "it is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing so much as $1 in any of those transactions." As he spoke, his portfolio was racking up $352 million in losses. Good one Joe!
Partnering Cassano would have to be AIG’s former President and CEO Martin Sullivan. After the company posted $11.5 billion in annual losses Sullivan had, somewhat predictably, announced the resignation of Joseph Cassano. Amazingly though, Sullivan allowed Cassano to retain $34 million in bonuses and kept him on the payroll as a consultant for $1 million a month. When asked why the company still retained Cassano after the collapse and despite his role in the probable downfall of civilization as we know it, Sullivan told the US Congress with a straight face that AIG wanted to "retain the 20-year knowledge that Mr. Cassano had."
Another must-have celebrity at any party of this nature is Phil Gramm. Senator Gramm, a laissez-faire ideologue from Texas, gets his invitation purely on the basis of allowing the Cassano’s of this world to thrive. Gramm was liable for contriving the most extraordinary deregulation of the financial services industry since Chinese Emperor Hien Tsung invented paper money in 806 AD. In 1999, Gramm co-sponsored a bill that repealed key aspects of the Glass-Steagall Act, easing the path for the creation of financial megafirms like Citigroup and eliminating built-in protections afforded by smaller banks. Gramm compounded the problem the following year by introducing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. This made it impossible to regulate credit swaps as either gambling or securities. Commercial banks (which, thanks to Gramm, were now competing directly with investment banks for customers) were driven to buy credit swaps to loosen capital in search of higher yields. Thus the die was cast for scams operated by aggressive and greedy executives like Joseph Cassano.
But the loudest applause will surely be accorded the return of George W Bush to perform an encore. “Have you heard the one about the global economic meltdown?” George will tease before recounting how the global financial crisis and ensuing bailouts actually constituted a coup d'état, cementing a takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.
At first the villagers here will probably look bemused by such a revelation, needing a few more jibes in order to get the punch line. “Don’t you get it you dummies?” George will chuckle. “The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders (who happen to be close friends of mine by the way) first wrecked the financial system before granting themselves almost unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. Translation: You still don’t get it!”
At this stage not even the oh-so-droll Greenspan would be able to contain himself. The party would draw to a glorious close in hysterics and the Isaan dancing would commence – festivities lasting into the early hours.
Naturally I would never expect the likes of George W Bush and his friends to trek all the way to Isaan simply to experience local life-styles. There is no need for the curtain is already lowering on their theatre. Bush and his partners-in-crime care for nobody but themselves. And in truth they are not wanted here. Besides, getting them here in their private jets would create a nightmare for Thailand’s security forces; not to mention the ecological damage caused by such an ambitious excursion. We would be planting thousands of trees each month for years in order to offset such a reckless carbon footprint. And nobody here can afford to do that.
Of course these people can never know what it is like to be poor. And it would be wrong to punish or deride them for what started as an accident of birth. But one question lingers deep in my mind: at what stage will the poor in this world actually figure out what is going on, draw a line in the sand and rise up against the ignorant, the rich and the powerful?
