On Thailand’s Economic Downturn…

Thailand, which is highly dependent on exports, is among the worst hit in the region, with its economy shrinking 6 percent in the last quarter of 2008 alone…

…‘It’s better to be poor in a warm country than a cold country,’ ” said Jean-Pierre Verbiest, the country director of the Asian Development Bank in Thailand. For this and other reasons, returning to one’s traditional village in the countryside is a sort of “social safety net,” Mr. Verbiest said, although he is not sure what the scale of the exodus will be because links to the countryside are weaker than they once were…”

From In Southeast Asia, Unemployed Abandon Cities for Their Villages New York Times

Also:

• Reverse Migration (washingtonmonthly.com)
• Southeast Asian nations band together to safeguard exports (telegraph.co.uk)
• Walden Bello: Asia: The Coming Fury (huffingtonpost.com)