The Canadian dollar reached parity with the US dollar for the first time in thirty years on Thursday. Did it make the news in the US?
Elaine
I read about it in the papers but I haven't seen anything on the news. I read that border towns like Windsor, ONT are having a tough time of it because all the American tourists have disappeared.
Deborah
Re: Did it make the news?
Josh Lalonde wrote:
The Canadian dollar reached parity with the US dollar for the first time in thirty years on Thursday. Did it make the news in the US?
Yes, but it was generally reported as the US dollar dropping in value.
Josh Lalonde
Re: Did it make the news?
Deborah wrote:
Josh Lalonde wrote:
The Canadian dollar reached parity with the US dollar for the first time in thirty years on Thursday. Did it make the news in the US?
Yes, but it was generally reported as the US dollar dropping in value.
Which of course is the real reason behind it.
Elaine
A sure sign of the apocalypse...
US merchants accepting euro over dollar, citing buck's weakness
By Alan Fein
New York - Some merchants in New York have begun accepting the euro as currency, citing the ever-growing weakness of the dollar. While the stores are taking foreign currency, they're still required to exchange it at the appropriate rate when deposited at their banks. But some fear that the euro could become the new American currency of choice.
Not so, says New Yorkers, the greenback will also be tops. Well, at least to us anyway, to Europeans it’s a cheaper currency and that's turned New York merchants into a global class of business owners now in tune to foreign currency exchange rates and the advantages of accepting it.
Part of New York shop owners' move in accepting euros is due to the flood of European vacationers showing up at their shops, euros in hand wanting to buy cheap American goods.
The European tourists showing up at their shops have gone up in numbers since merchants started displaying signs in their shop windows saying they accept euros. The convenience of not having to exchange them when they reach New York is becoming a mixed blessing for the merchants who have made slightly more by hanging on to the foreign currency and depositing less often as the dollar has sagged in value.
"It's no windfall, in exchanging euros," one shop owner explained. "But we are getting more Europeans coming into our store because of we accept their currency."
Since the dollar began dropping and the euro rising, coming to America for vacation, or in some cases just to shop, has turned into a boom for those New York merchants who've been savvy enough business owners to cash in on the rush.
But the euro isn't the only currency finding its way into the hands of New Yorkers. Canadian and British tourists are pouring into the Big Apple as well.
During the holiday shopping season, there were hundreds of Britons arriving in New York just to shop on a daily basis and their level of visits didn't stop after the holidays either. Here, they could buy goods for less than fifty pence to the dollar, or in our language, a half buck bought a dollar's worth of goods.
Canadians too were flooding over the border to shop in the United States as the Canadian dollar, called the 'Loonie' surpassed the dollar in valuation. Gasoline was less, food in restaurants and vacation hot spots like Las Vegas, all saw a rise in Canadian tourism beginning in the fourth quarter of last year when the dollar began to weaken.
greg in noord-frankrijk
Another one (that happened already) : in 2006 the Fed (a private bank that issues a private currency called the US dollar), stopped publishing the M3 index, an economic aggregate designed to assess money supply (and thus inflation).
Last one (though not really fresh news either) : the gold standard has now been discarded for 37 years and the US dollar (which is supposed to have "replaced" gold since then) is not even underwritten by US authorities : the dollar is essentially a private, not national, unit of account backed up by almost nothing substantial but the world's wavering interest/will to finance the US economy.
Elaine
Well, one positive aspect to the weakened dollar that I've noticed... lots of tourists! Practically everywhere I go, I hear languages that we don't normally hear in these parts-- French, Italian, German, Dutch, Czech, Hungarian, Greek, etc. I was getting a little bored with all the Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, Farsi, Armenian that constantly surround me.
Uriel
Re: The Incredible Shrinking US Dollar
Josh Lalonde wrote:
The Canadian dollar reached parity with the US dollar for the first time in thirty years on Thursday. Did it make the news in the US?
News to me. But I am duly horrified, if that makes you happy!
Uriel
Well, it's not doing much for tourism here, because compared to the collar, the peso is still worth ... diddly.
You know, for all the international buzz about the dollar's big drop, I haven't noticed any real domestic change in the dollar's value. It still buys the same amount of milk and eggs and lettuce that it did last year. So it hasn't really affected most people's day to day lives, which probably explains the lack of excitement we have about it.
