ack! financial ack!

[arethinn]

The US dollar is even more fucked than it was the last time I looked. According to xe.com, the "midmarket" rate versus the Canadian dollar is 1 CAD = 0.780999 USD, which is some three cents more than the last time I checked a couple months ago. Wells Fargo (my bank) is selling at 1 CAD = 0.809332 USD. Eek. When I started travelling to Canada almost four years ago (!), the xe.com averages were about 62-63 cents and I generally got about 66-67 cents at the bank. Well, I guess it means that for the $200 minimum online purchase of foreign currency, I won't wind up getting way more Canadian money than I know what to do with over a Thursday to Monday...

Comments

[graphxgrrl.livejournal.com]

I'm looking on the bright side, my dollar for dollar (with a slight raise) transfer of my salary into Canadian is looking less painful every day...

[ferretboi.livejournal.com]

as a Canadian you'd think I'd be all for this but I'm not. The strong Canadian dollar is wreaking havock with our markets. As a primarily trade based economy our resources sold to the states are the big thing so we'd sell something for X dollars American and get X+Y dollars Canadian with the bonus exchange money. Also it meant a lot of companies would come here to produce their wears and buy their products. That bonus is disapearing. Sure it's not so bad when I go to the states now but it sucks as a country.

[dreamingvoid.livejournal.com]

It'll get worse, far worse. And on purpose. I follow the financial crap for many reasons, and there are two current reasons for the whole ploy: (1) ALL of our jobs are leaving this country at a pace so fast you'd not even notice you were standing on the street jobless and (2) it's 2004, an election year, and Shrub et al is trying to recover the economy hard and fast.

Latest reports are that the Fed won't raise interest rates until after the election next year. Which means this slide will probably continue unchecked and actually accelerate toward the end of the year.

On the plus side, it will quickly become cheaper to keep employees over here (people like you and me) rather than shipping our jobs off to India and so on.

On the minus side, I think we're doomed anyway. :) There's a backlash side to this the likes of which haven't been tried in decades. But in desperation the gov is trying it right now. The big red button. And they're holding it down.

It may work in the end though. Or may not. Who knows, but I'm honestly glad they're at least trying something. Otherwise wtf do I care anyway if I'm eating out of garbage cans and living under bridges.