on achieving parity
I didn't start paying attention to the international money market until I moved to Canada (viz, when it actually became relevant to me). But right now the USD is getting CLOBBERED. By, no kidding, the Canadian dollar. Arrrrrrgh. It's been a long and painful process. The USD has been getting squishier all year, and the CAD has been steadily rising for no reason I can readily explain. Today marked a milestone, when the CAD (for the first time in thirty years) pulled up even to the USD. They're exchanging one for one.
What does this mean? For most of you guys, all those Canadian quarters that people have fobbed off on you over the years are finally worth face value (go exchange them, while they're still worth something!). But for Barbarus and me it's pretty awful. We still need to pull a lot of money from USD into CAD (most significantly, we just cashed Barbarus' big Stafford loan check, right after the USD tanked). We're making a good amount of money in CAD, but not enough to pay our various Canadian bills, so we can't take advantage of the exchange rate to buy any USD. The effective price of Canadian goods is way up for us, since the prices are stuck at the ~120% rate (relative to USD) of 2-5 years ago. And with our luck, I'm betting that by the time we move back and cash out our Canadian chips, the USD will be securely on top again.
So I guess the purpose of this post is to point out that Barbarus and I are even poorer than we're supposed to be, and much poorer in Canadian than we are in American. And to warn you that this is possibly not (sorry, Elizabeth--please come anyway!) the ideal time to visit Canada.
There's other stuff going on, but maybe I'll write about that later.
What does this mean? For most of you guys, all those Canadian quarters that people have fobbed off on you over the years are finally worth face value (go exchange them, while they're still worth something!). But for Barbarus and me it's pretty awful. We still need to pull a lot of money from USD into CAD (most significantly, we just cashed Barbarus' big Stafford loan check, right after the USD tanked). We're making a good amount of money in CAD, but not enough to pay our various Canadian bills, so we can't take advantage of the exchange rate to buy any USD. The effective price of Canadian goods is way up for us, since the prices are stuck at the ~120% rate (relative to USD) of 2-5 years ago. And with our luck, I'm betting that by the time we move back and cash out our Canadian chips, the USD will be securely on top again.
So I guess the purpose of this post is to point out that Barbarus and I are even poorer than we're supposed to be, and much poorer in Canadian than we are in American. And to warn you that this is possibly not (sorry, Elizabeth--please come anyway!) the ideal time to visit Canada.
There's other stuff going on, but maybe I'll write about that later.