Veronica: In the hot of Bangkok’s gold district, business is good. Everyone’s buying whatever they can afford. In Thailand, earning gold is possibly culture and that’s been going on for years. So it’s not at all unusual for a fruit vendor of apparently modus means like these to sink all their savings into gold.
Sometimes I’ve told that wall hand and buy Boolean box.
So in here what have we got, maybe a hundred thousand US dollars worth of gold?
Tanarat: Yes, it seems close to. Yes.
Veronica: Tanarat Pasawongse is a third generation gold trader.
Tanarat: In the Asian countries at least most of them have some Chinese background so the Chinese they believe in gold as something for luck. If you see, every Chinese New Year no matter how expensive the gold price is, the grandmother will, no matter how many kids she has, how many more grandchildren she has, she would buy it anyways for the kids every year.
Veronica: The family business has scaled up and gone global in keeping with the times. Upstairs from the traditional retail shop there are trading rooms for gold orders and features in kinds of gold back financial products to suit the needs of all customers. Even with gold hovering at all time highs they can’t seem to get enough.
This week the room’s been busy with hundreds of people hoping to make some money amid the global stocks sell off in currency interventions. One investment bank’s predicting that gold will reach 2500 US dollars in ounce by the end of the year. Around the world that’s a lot of anxiety about the financial markets in failing competence and institutions. There’s a strong sense that risks are high. And that’s always when gold shines. Veronica Pedrosa, Al Jazeera Bangkok.
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