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Thai Buddhist Monk Relies on Karma for Lending Success
Phra Subin Paneeto, right, offers financial advice to borrower Dusit Satharalai. Mr. Dusit turned to Phra Subin’s network after struggling to pay off a high-interest loan from another lender
BAAN NA KLUEA – Buddhist monks aren’t really known for dipping into the material world of finance. Phra Subin Paneeto, though, says he felt he didn’t have much choice when he saw his neighbors near Thailand’s border with Cambodia were struggling to make ends meet.
So, in the early 1990s, he started a micro-lending operation with a few thousand baht, lending small amounts to villagers to help pay for home repairs, buy new farm machinery and pay off other, larger debts.
Today, Phra Subin’s micro-banking network has amassed about $60 million in deposits and loans.
The idea is that its 66,000 members will each contribute sums ranging from 10 baht to 500 baht, or about 30 cents to $15, a month. Each member who wishes to borrow is bundled together with three to five guarantors, and is allowed to tap more than they put in, at an interest rate of 1% to 2% a month—or less if other villagers agree. Some borrowers pay no interest.
The guarantors, who are all members of the group, are often friends, relatives or neighbors of the borrowers. Members have an incentive to be guarantors so that others will be guarantors for them when they wish to borrow money.
Half of the venture’s earnings are paid to the members at the end of each year. The rest go to a village welfare fund.
Thais have plenty of other banking options to choose from. According to the Bank of Thailand, the country’s central bank, about 90% of Thai households have access to financial services. In rural areas, government-sponsored village credit programs have lent more than $5 billion since the idea caught on in the early 2000s, making Thailand one of the biggest players in the global micro-finance scene.
Borrowers make payments on their loans from the Sajja Sasom Sab network at a Buddhist temple
Nonetheless, demand for Phra Subin’s Buddhist-flavored lending program, called Sajja Sasom Sab, continues to gain traction.
Other temples and monasteries around predominantly Buddhist Thailand have followed his example. More than 40 of the country’s 76 provinces have witnessed monks get involved in similar micro-finance projects.
The reason for Phra Subin’s continued success?
Some borrowers, depending on how well they are perceived to follow Buddhist precepts such as telling the truth or avoiding intoxicating substances, aren’t charged interest, Phra Subin says.
“Other financial institutions, they look at your financial records, assets and collateral,” he explained in a Buddhist temple in the hub of his saving network here in Trat province. “But the community will evaluate your good deeds.”
No-interest loans cut into the lender’s profit margin, but Phra Subin says that is offset by his system’s emphasis on Buddhist principles—he calls it a karmic peer-pressure system—which makes defaults virtually nonexistent.
“If you are not honest or sincere to other group members, nobody will help you when you want to borrow the money,” Phra Subin continued. “This community will force you to practice Dharma, work hard, be honest and take responsibility. Otherwise no one will want you.”
Dharma refers to the teachings of Buddha.
Other religious groups around the world have tried to tackle poverty using micro-finance. The Roman Catholic charity Caritas Manila has helped form micro-banks in the Philippines that have expanded access to credit there; its cooperative now has 20,000 members and has a repayment rate of 96%. The Catholic church has embarked on similar projects in Indonesia, where it has set up credit unions in remote areas of the archipelago, such as Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo.
In India, Hindu charities and temples have helped rural communities secure loans from banks. Indian banking regulations prohibit banks and micro-finance institutions from taking an explicitly religious approach in their lending decisions. But some Hindu groups do help, says Shantharam Pai, financial director with Shri Kshetra Dharmasthala Rural Development Project, a charitable trust that is associated with a Hindu temple in the southern state of Karnataka. His organization acts on behalf of commercial banks, as agents, to help people, mostly women, navigate the banking system and obtain loans.
By applying Buddhist precepts to its lending policies, Phra Subin’s microfinance operation in Thailand goes considerably further than its counterparts. Its supporters say that applying the concept of karma, that an individual’s actions inevitably affect them later in life, appears to reinforce the peer-pressure model that is at the root of most micro-finance programs, helping to keep the operation’s borrowers from defaulting.
The operation’s managers say there are no current defaults and the lender is in contact with all borrowers who are late on their payments. In Thailand’s commercial sector, loan defaults were about 2.16% of outstanding loans, or 278.2 billion baht in 2014.
Moreover, the more a borrower repays, the lower the interest rate will be the next month, unlike at commercial banks, which calculate interest rates at set levels.
Traditional bankers generally applaud such a system. “These forms of lending and savings promotion are typically observed in low-income communities in rural areas,” says Piyasak Ukritnukun, managing director of CFG Services Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Bank of Ayudhya.
He said larger commercial banks tend to shy away from similar lending structures “due to the relatively small loan sizes and lower interest rates coupled with high operating costs.”
There are other potential drawbacks to the less-formal village micro-finance system: Much of the Sajja Sasom Sab network’s success is bound up in the efforts of its charismatic founder, Phra Subin. Economists such as Luxmon Attapich at the Asian Development Bank say it is sometimes a problem for lenders to rely so heavily on the leadership of one person. “What if they are not around anymore?” she asked.
She and other economists say that some informal microfinance programs, while initially successful, ultimately falter because their leaders die or move away.
Still, Phra Subin’s network has been a boon to the many Thais who still don’t use the formal banking network. According to an Asian Development Bank report, more than 1.7 million Thais borrow from informal lenders, including some 335,000 who borrow from loan sharks or other unlicensed lenders.
Dusit Satharalai, for instance, borrowed some 300,000 baht with an 8% annual interest rate from an agricultural cooperative in 1992 to start a durian plantation.
The venture was slow to bear fruit, however. Twenty years later, Mr. Dusit found himself struggling to make payments and prevent his land being seized. Adding to his problems, the co-op increased his interest rate to 13% because of late payments, he said.
He borrowed money from his sister, but when she had to pay for her children’s school fees, Mr. Dusit was running out of options.
At his brother’s suggestion, Mr. Dusit turned to the Sajja Sasom Sab group in 2013, securing a 400,000 baht loan from the fund with an interest rate of 0.5% per month. After two years, he has already paid half of it back and plans to clear his debt to zero by the end of this year, including the co-op loan. Business has picked up at Mr. Dusit’s plantation, which has helped with his payments, but the lower-interest loan from the Sajja Sasom Sab has also eased his struggles.
Mr. Dusit’s niece, Panisa Satharalai, whose father borrowed 1 million baht from the fund to rebuild the family home, says she has doubled her income since then by offering home-stay accommodation and starting a catering business.
“This is a happy debt,” said Ms. Panisa. “This loan gave me a job and makes me want to get up early every morning to work hard, and it shows how united our community is. I won’t need to worry that I could not pay it back and risk losing my house and land.”
By Wilawan Watcharasakwet
A recent report indicates that since Trudeau’s announcement of his gun buyback program four years ago, almost none of the banned firearms have been surrendered.
The federal government plans to purchase 2,063 firearm models from retailers following the enactment of Bill C-21, which amends various Acts and introduces certain consequential changes related to firearms. It was granted royal assent on December 15 of last year.
This ban immediately criminalized the actions of federally-licensed firearms owners regarding the purchase, sale, transportation, importation, exportation, or use of hundreds of thousands of rifles and shotguns that were previously legal.
The gun ban focused on what it termed ‘assault-style weapons,’ which are, in reality, traditional semi-automatic rifles and shotguns that have enjoyed popularity among hunters and sport shooters for over a century.
In May 2020, the federal government enacted an Order-in-Council that prohibited 1,500 types of “assault-style” firearms and outlined specific components of the newly banned firearms. Property owners must adhere to the law by October 2023.
Trudeau’s Buyback Hasn’t Happened
“In the announcement regarding the ban, the prime minister stated that the government would seize the prohibited firearms, assuring that their lawful owners would be ‘grandfathered’ or compensated fairly.” “That hasn’t happened,” criminologist Gary Mauser told Rebel News.
Mauser projected expenses ranging from $2.6 billion to $6.7 billion. The figure reflects the compensation costs amounting to $756 million, as outlined by the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO).
“The projected expenses for gathering the illegal firearms are estimated to range from $1.6 billion to $7 billion.” “This range estimate increases to between $2.647 billion and $7 billion when compensation costs to owners are factored in,” Mauser stated.
Figures requested by Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs concerning firearms prohibited due to the May 1, 2020 Order In Council reveal that $72 million has been allocated to the firearm “buyback” program, yet not a single firearm has been confiscated to date.
In a recent revelation, Public Safety Canada disclosed that the federal government allocated a staggering $41,094,556, as prompted by an order paper question from Conservative Senator Don Plett last September, yet yielded no tangible outcomes.
An internal memo from late 2019 revealed that the Liberals projected their politically motivated harassment would incur a cost of $1.8 billion.
Enforcement efforts Questioned
By December 2023, estimates from TheGunBlog.ca indicate that the Liberals and RCMP had incurred or were responsible for approximately $30 million in personnel expenses related to the enforcement efforts. The union representing the police service previously stated that the effort to confiscate firearms is a “misdirected effort” aimed at ensuring public safety.
“This action diverts crucial personnel, resources, and funding from tackling the more pressing and escalating issue of criminal use of illegal firearms,” stated the National Police Federation (NPF).
The Canadian Sporting Arms & Ammunition Association (CSAAA), representing firearms retailers, has stated it will have “zero involvement” in the confiscation of these firearms. Even Canada Post held back from providing assistance due to safety concerns.
The consultant previously assessed that retailers are sitting on almost $1 billion worth of inventory that cannot be sold or returned to suppliers because of the Order-In-Council.
“Despite the ongoing confusion surrounding the ban, after four years, we ought to be able to address one crucial question.” Has the prohibition enhanced safety for Canadians? Mauser asks.
Illegally Obtained Firearms are the Problem
Statistics Canada reports a 10% increase in firearm-related violent crime between 2020 and 2022, rising from 12,614 incidents to 13,937 incidents. In that timeframe, the incidence of firearm-related violent crime increased from 33.7 incidents per 100,000 population in 2021 to 36.7 incidents the subsequent year.
“This marks the highest rate documented since the collection of comparable data began in 2009,” the criminologist explains.
Supplementary DataData indicates that firearm homicides have risen since 2020. “The issue lies not with lawfully-held firearms,” Mauser stated.
Firearms that have been banned under the Order-in-Council continue to be securely stored in the safes of their lawful owners. The individuals underwent a thorough vetting process by the RCMP and are subject to nightly monitoring to ensure there are no infractions that could pose a risk to public safety.
“The firearms involved in homicides were seldom legally owned weapons wielded by their rightful owners,” Mauser continues. The number of offenses linked to organized crime has surged from 4,810 in 2016 to a staggering 13,056 in 2020.
“If those in power … aim to diminish crime and enhance public safety, they ought to implement strategies that effectively focus on offenders and utilize our limited tax resources judiciously to reach these objectives,” he stated.
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Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.
According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.
Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.
Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.
Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.
To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.
Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.
On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.
In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.
Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.
Pixa Bay
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.
TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.
When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.
And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.
Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.
A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.
Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.
But today, it feels more like reality.
Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.
SOURCE | CNN
(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.
The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.
Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.
This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.
In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.
The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.
This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.
The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.
In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.
According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.
Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.
The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.
Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.
For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.
Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.
As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.
As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.
The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.
SOURCE: AP
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