let government build infrastructure and help the poor and private sector trade and invest to economically develop the nation. the recent trend is that, central banks are now given the sole task of keeping price stability, and is given the independence to do that since if they have no independence, government will, at time ask it to do things that are in conflict to that sole function. thus the modern central bank is really akin to keeping peace in the nation through enhancing stability and it ’ s other people ’ s jobs to create wealth or turmoil as the case may be, the turmoil being a necessary instrument in coming to the right policies or at time the wrong ones or in an ever worse ending turmoil without apparent purpose as is so often the case in emerging markets. but it certainly is not now deemed the function of the central bank to be doing this sort of thing. so central bankers can now claim that they are basically trying to create peace and hopefully in a peaceful economy, there will be better prosperity than a wildly gyrating one. in a peaceful economy, growing stably at a high but sustainable rate, one cannot expect that there will be no criminals hidden deep down somewhere inside the society. a new instrument has therefore been added to the arsenal of monetary policy and financial supervision in the anti - money laundering legislations. the first anti - money laundering legislation was issued in 1970 by the us government. the mechanism is generally that cash deposit of more than the minimum stipulated amount would be examined. in the case of thailand, this legislation was issued in april and became effective in august 1999. the central bank participated fully in the draft and cooperates with its implementation. we have taken the option though that central banks should be trying to put up a good system for people to operate in rather than having another prime function of catching thieves and criminals, and in this legislation therefore a new independent government office has been put up dedicated solely to the pursuit of the articles of the legislation. we sit on the committee under the legislation as i have just said, and cooperate wherever we can to make sure its execution is effected and effective. this is another occasion where central banks contribute directly to peace in that criminal activities which by nature are not peaceful is kept to a minimum. speaking of criminal activities, vote buying in an election is also a criminal activity and although legislation makes it difficult for us to tackle this problem, we cooperate with the neutral national election commission in tracking down movement of funds and we have assigned an assistant governor to directly coordinate with this

” culture has been reversed. in the united states, the “ pay now, save later ” culture has worked for the us economy, as people have better job opportunities. we should not promote such culture in our economy because generally people, especially those in the provinces, cannot easily earn extra income to pay for their increased debt burdens. this is why i try to tell people that we should not adopt the western way of “ pay now, save later ” mentality too rapidly, or allow this mentality to become a norm in our society ; otherwise a host of problems would arise. credit card and personal loan business still have benefits for consumers in terms of their convenience, particularly for those customers who have financial literacy and self - control. however, there is a need to control and supervise this business to prevent retail customers from overspending and, at the same time, prevent the operators from overcharging interest rates and fees. ladies and gentlemen, let me bring you to the second issue that concerns me even more than the change in value placed on our saving culture. recently i notice that business and economy are putting greater emphasis on size and growth. people get excited with large investment projects ; such as the newly opened 12 billion baht shopping complex. people admire big businesses with large earnings and profits, and businesses that achieve high rates of growth and expansion. investors in stock market are interested in businesses that are merging in order to gain size, increase their market share, and squeeze out their smaller rivals. in some cases, this leads to monopolistic power, with ability to take even more advantage of their customers and consumers. the younger generation places importance on success measured by numbers and quantity rather than quality, value, and merit. the government, which is supposed to be a role model for the public in general, seems to be concerned only with high gdp growth rates – the higher the better. issues such as mega projects and the rally in the stock index are more welcomed. all success factors are tied - in with increases in monetary value, or in other words, “ only money matters ”. under this environment of “ only money matters ”, and with growth and profit as key determinants of success, the business sector naturally strives to achieve these goals without regard to what is destroyed or lost along the way. for example, many tourist destinations have been created at the expense of local natural habitats and environments. in order to minimize their own costs, industrial factories release untreated wastewater into