Can we get an edit to the title of the thread?
Canadian dollar = $1.07 US
I feel like I’ve entered the bizarro world.
Monthly job stats from Canada, coupled with high oil prices. The rising loonie, relative to the greenback, isn’t all great news. It’s going to cost more manufacturing jobs in Canada. However, our economy sure does seem to be firing on all cylinders right now. Unemployment is at a 33 year low. We’re running major federal budget surpluses, and tax cuts are abounding. I hope this all translates to economic growth in spite of the problems in the U.S. But when your largest customer takes almost 90% of your products, and your largest customer is having financial issues, you start to worry.
I’m not sure that the GST cut is a good idea–I think we need to invest in infrastructure. (Translation: fix the %&*# roads! And trains, and transit, and electricity system, and water mains, and…)
What we really need to do is make ourselves more locally self-reliant. Why? So that the loss of 1100 jobs at Chrysler, say, doesn’t mean as much of a disaster for the workers involved. So that if oil prices rise and imports reduce, we can provide replacements for the imported items locally or regoinally.
We need to electrify our transport system, so that we can power it from whatever’s available: hydro, nuclear, gas, wind, etc, rather than relying on fuels made from imported oil. (And yes, eastern Canada does rely on imported oil. We sell enough oil out west to the States to pay for it, but what if they run into problems?)
This is so weird. When I first got on eBay I was (grudgingly) used to mentally converting US prices to Canadian by adding 30+%. Now I have to subtract. Worse, as it stands right now, if I’d waited until today to buy my Touch, I could have saved myself another $20.
What a difference a few days make.
I’ve noticed that some places are now selling magazines (and some books) at the listed US price instead of the Canadian price as some sort of promotion. Cool!
I just thought of something.
This currency rise could cost my sister her job. She works in a call-centre in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. The call centre was outsourced from the States (which could have been as simple as driving across the international bridge).
If the Canadian dollar stays high relative to the US, the equivalent job in the US could become competitive again. The Canadian dollar would have to be high enough that the salary plus the cost of health insurance on the US side was less that the salary on the Canadian side, but I have no idea when that might be.
I don’t know what to think right now. The dollars I’m earning are getting lower and lower in value.
But national pride compels me to really enjoy this turnaround.
Whatever am I to do?
The difference would have to cover the amount her employer would spend on health insurance.
Most of our health insurance is publically-paid through the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, so that’s fnanced through taxes, not the individual. We just have to get dental insurance and long-term disability insurance.
Now, are US taxes enough lower than Canadian to make up for the cost of health insurance?
The hell? Yesterday the Canadian dollar got up to $1.08 U.S. That’s neat and everything, but exactly how poorly is the U.S. dollar performing right now? I’ve only seen one wee report that said it dropped agaist all major currencies again.
My knowledge of economics only conver what’s in my piggy bank. What exactly does this mean for the U.S. economy? When I go to CNN, their main “money” page talks about how expensive oil is, but there’s no headline about the continuing slide of the greenback. Is it not that big a deal in the U.S. as it is here? It’s big news here. (I’m living in Canada). The U.S. dollar is at a record low.
It isn’t just the US Dollar’s value; the Canadian economy is doing quite well at the moment, which is driving the value of the Loonie up as well.
Drive North and get an apple fritter and a large double-double, paying with US currency. It’s the right thing to do.
Yes, this I know. The Canadian economy is very heavily linked to the commodities market. So the Canadian dollar is going strong on plenty of its own merits. But the greenback is sliding against ALL major currencies right now, at a record low agaist the Euro.
What’s the public perception of the U.S. dollar right now in the U.S.?
I think that both things are happening: the Canadian dollar is rising on its own, and the US dollar is dropping on its own. The fact that the two are next to each other merely points up the contrast.
There was a report in the past day or so about a Brasilian supermodel who no longer wishes to accept contracts that pay in US dollars. Not that important in the grand scheme of things, perhaps… except that it could change public perception, shift the psychology, and this run, for both currencies, is all about the psychology now.
And the Adobe software I want to buy for myself at home is $1800 US. That’s now $1665 Canadian.
Buy it off the Adobe website, add shipping (let’s say $30) and GST (6%), and it works out to $1938 Canadian. The Apple store in the Eaton Centre in Toronto was selling the same software with last spring’s prices, when the US dollar was $1.06 Canadian: $2245.
It’s all due to our having coloured money. Once most of the U.S.A. greenbacks get more colourful, people will want them, and the value of U.S. currency will rise.
But it has to be the right colours.
I’m finding amusement in all those American chains with shops in Canada who decided (ages ago now) it was clever to label their products with two prices, US & CAN .
It was enormously annoying to be standing in line to pay and know that Americans were paying a lot less and the premium Canadians were paying was well above what the exchange difference would cover. Like someone pointing out exactly how much they’re screwing you over!
It’s been fun to watch those same retailers scramble to forge some new policy once Canadian’s figured out they could go in and choose to pay the American price equivalent (or in actual US $).
Now prices are dropping at these retailers.
Suddenly that double pricing thing doesn’t seem so clever, eh?
Last week I mentioned in this thread that Darryl had posted a sign in the caf advertising a 90% exchange rate. The sign was down today, and I asked him about it, and he said that he was thinking of adjusting the rate downward.
Right now, according to XE, USD 1 = CAD 0.925. Subtract CAD 0.025 for the exchange (2.5%, which is a good rate–those booths at the airport charge around 7.5%, which is up in Coinstar territory), and one is left with CAD 0.90. The caf is just barely breaking even on the exchange rate.
It works fine if exchange rates and prices change more slowly than the stock turns over…
The Canadian dollar just hit 1.0883 US. The US dollar is below 92c Canadian. :eek:
[sub]And it went down while I was typing that.[/sub]