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Canadian Dollar Reaches Parity with US$
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Sep 20, 2007 11:08 AM
from the who's-loony-now-eh dept.
from the who's-loony-now-eh dept.
boxlight writes in to mark the occasion when the Canadian dollar hit parity with the US dollar for the first time in 31 years. The article notes that Canada has run a budget surplus in each of the last 10 years. "This is actually bad for the profits of Canadian corporations that sell their products to the US for US dollars (Canada sells far more to the US that the US sells to Canada); but it means us Canucks will get cheaper Macs as the Canadian prices get closer to US prices with every new release."
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Article is useless without a graph! (Score:3, Insightful)
USA Today? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:USA Today? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Article is useless without a graph! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Article is useless without a graph! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Article is useless without a graph! (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/economy/loonie.html [www.cbc.ca]
Re:Article is useless without a graph! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Article is useless without a graph! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Article is useless without a graph! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Article is useless without a graph! (Score:5, Interesting)
At present it's just below parity (0.9986), but the expectation is for the Canadian dollar to exceed the US dollar in the near future.
Re:Article is useless without a graph! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Article is useless without a graph! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Article is useless without a graph! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes indeed. My first thought was that the title should have read "US dollar reaches parity with Canadian dollar."
Re:Article is useless without a graph! (Score:5, Insightful)
> Although like most US policy of the last 6 years, instead of fixing the issue they plan to take over others. Soon Canada, the U.S. and Mexico will share the "Amero" as currency within the North American Union."
Dream on. Canada hasn't had a federal budget deficit in more than a decade, and social security is fully funded on an actuarial for the next 75 years (that's right - 75 years, its not a typo). Contrast that to the US deficit, and the unfunded mess that is known as social security, with off-the-book intra-government "lending" totalling 75 trillion.
You can have our loonies when you pry them from our cold dead hands! Actually, not even then! There's more of a chance of switching to the Euro as the greenback slowly does its imitation of SCO stock.
Re:Article is useless without a graph! (Score:5, Funny)
Oh yeah? Yeah? Well you guys don't even have a decent health care sys... OK, well, but you guys don't have a democr... Well, you don't have real bee... Damn. Just never effin' mind, OK.
Re:Article is useless without a graph! (Score:5, Funny)
"Carolina" isn't an American state any more than "Columbia" is a Canadian province.
Obiligatory Simpsons quote... (Score:5, Funny)
In response to both your post and your sig, this really is obligatory:
Singer: The trading gap shuffle, we're in a heap of trouble, doing the trading gap shuffle!
Bart: He already sang this song!
Marge: No, that was about the budget gap. This is the trading gap.
what to do with "Canadian dollar jokes"? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:what to do with "Canadian dollar jokes"? (Score:5, Funny)
Screwed economy but cheaper Macs?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Somehow that seems like little comfort for us Canadians that realize the impact this has overall on our economy. Anyone that isn't into business or economics up here gets excited about the CDN dollar being stronger because it translates into better cross border shopping for a very small minority, cheaper vacations, and some discounted consumer items like Macs. But take a look at how this impacts the country as a whole and we don't have much to celebrate as an exporting nation.
Re:Screwed economy but cheaper Macs?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Our economy is stronger than it has been in my entire life. At .70 US, .80 US and .90 US there were people predicting the imminent collapse of the economy, but as a whole it has just gotten stronger.
And while we may export resources, we largely import manufactured goods, so for some one looking to buy just about anything, this is good news.
Its also worth noting that while the loonie has gotten a little stronger, this is largely a story of the US dollar weakening and the Canadian dollar not following (as it has often done in the past). This means that the price of Canadian goods have not increased globally, leaving plenty of opportunity to sell to other markets.
Re:Screwed economy but cheaper Macs?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Somehow that seems like little comfort for us Canadians that realize the impact this has overall on our economy. Anyone that isn't into business or economics up here gets excited about the CDN dollar being stronger because it translates into better cross border shopping for a very small minority, cheaper vacations, and some discounted consumer items like Macs. But take a look at how this impacts the country as a whole and we don't have much to celebrate as an exporting nation.
Dont' over estimate the crunch on our export industry. A significant amount is via oil which is a commodity that does not reduce in demand linearly with price. Manufacturing etc... has been on a steady decline for the last 8 years as well as the dollar rose. That has hurt the eastern Ontario economy. At the same time sky high oil prices and an increase in demand world wide has lead to a super heated economy in the west. The west gains from this as our commodity is in demand and we are at capacity to provide. so a Price increase helps the western provinces while it hurts the eastern provinces. Our trade with the US is immense but it hasn't ever been about selling them large quantities of manufactured goods. There is also a time lag related to the effects as contracts signed when the dollar was weaker will remain for a while. So it'll be a while before we see how parity helps or hinder us. As a westerner I don't mind a big crunch in the eastern economic power block.
Re:Screwed economy but cheaper Macs?! (Score:4, Interesting)
To be sure, the impact on the Canadian economy from the downturn in the US housing and car markets is going to cost jobs but that has less to do with the dollar then it does with the weakness in those markets in the US.
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Re:Screwed economy but cheaper Macs?! (Score:5, Funny)
Benefits to a cheaper dollar (Score:5, Insightful)
* American products become cheaper to foreign markets. This helps with the trade imbalances we currently have.
* Foreign products become more expensive to American consumers, also helping with trade deficits.
* It discourages foreign workers from sneaking into the US. Getting $4.00 an hour is suddenly not so much compared to what they get paid in their home country.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
Re:Benefits to a cheaper dollar (Score:5, Interesting)
Someday, countries like Canada with lots of wheat will want something besides debt instruments in exchange for their goods. So too will countries like Saudi Arabia want something of tangible value in exchange for their oil.
Rapidly rising prices of foreign goods may someday bring back American industry, but that is a generation away. We have too few engineers and no manufacturing infrastructure. We will have to train a whole new class of workers and build many new factories. This doesn't happen overnight.
Re:Benefits to a cheaper dollar (Score:4, Insightful)
The declining dollar will drive a sharp inflationary pressure, which severely limits the Feds ability to moderate the economy. The Fed might want to lower interest rates, but every lowering will result in a rapid inflationary hike, leaving it with the choice of either letting property prices collapse with associated pain of bank runs and failures, or by letting the dollar continue in free fall which means letting everyone holding US assets pay for the irresponsible behaviour of some.
And of course, if the Fed shows it's going to let the dollar tank, that'll just cause everyone to dump even more dollar assets, driving the dollar down further.
Long term there will be a correction, and there will be advantages such as a resolution to the trade imbalances. But the fundamental problem is that large parts of the next decades consumption has already been done, paid for by borrowed money secured with overinflated real-estate prices. Adjusting to paying interest rather than shopping luxuries will suck badly.
On the bright side, perhaps the economists will bang their little heads together hard enough this time to come up with numbers for GDP growth and asset values that are actually based in reality.
Re:Meanwhile (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry that has happened to you. Unfortunately, anytime the value of something changes, someone wins and someone loses. I know hindsight is 20/20, but how far did you expect to get living in Europe with US dollars in the bank? Why would you not change those over to Euros when you decided to live there?
As for the idea that discouraging foreign workers is a good thing, might I ask in what universe you live in? Do you actually want to pay 25 bucks for a meal in a cheapish restaurant? That is what will happen if the immigrant labor leaves.
I have no problem with immigrant labor. What I have a problem with is illegal immigrant labor. Sure, it helps me get a cheaper burger at Chili's, but when I have to pay $50 for an aspirin at a hospital, I figure I'm not saving all that much. Besides, slavery allowed for cheap food and clothing as well, but that doesn't make it right. When an illegal is working at a plantation.. I mean farm, they are more or less owned by that farm. Only instead of being shackled by chains, they are shackled with the thread of deportation or imprisonment. I expect foreign workers in the US to get a fair wage. When that worker is here illegally, enforcing minimum wage or any other labor laws is impossible.
Re:Benefits to a cheaper dollar (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, until enterprising individuals build plants in the US to make the goods we were previously importing, but at a lower price. And those plants start hiring US workers.
Yes, I agree, that would be a catastrophe - let's just continue buying all our stuff from other countries and let our workers keep losing their jobs. Outsource everything - eventually the world will just pay us American's to sit around and watch ads for their products.
The glass is half full or half empty? (Score:5, Insightful)
Book Prices? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Book Prices? (Score:4, Informative)
Freefall.... (Score:5, Informative)
cheaper Macs (Score:5, Interesting)
Goods are allways at higher price in Canada.
Look at cars, even if no border tax exist for foreing company to import car in Canada (or in the USA) all car have better price and better warrenty in the USA than in Canada. Go to jeep.ca or toyota.ca and try to build a car and then compare it with jeep.com ou toyota.com for a 30k car in the USA you will buy 36K in Canada (plus taxes).
Samething for everything from Apple, you got 10% to 30% of foreing charge when you buy in Canada.
And don't try to buy it at Amazon.com, they don't send thing like that in Canada, you must buy at Amazon.ca.
Try this Ipod Nano at future shop [futureshop.ca] 219$ (or BestBuy.ca) [bestbuy.ca]
Same Ipod nano at BestBuy.com [bestbuy.com] at 149$
Even if the Can$ is higger thant the US$ price a cheapper in USA, That's before taxes, and the overall business etablishment price is lower in Canada.
Whose deficit is it, anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Whose deficit is it, anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether that's a good thing or not is a matter of opinion, but their lack of a military being the reason they can be more socialized is a matter of fact.
Re:Whose deficit is it, anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)
The US spends more on its military than the rest of the world COMBINED. As a matter of percentage of GDP the Canadian government spends less than other NATO members on average, but we spend more than Israel does in dollar terms (bet you wouldn't have guessed that one).
Truth is Canada spends less on our military because WE DON'T HAVE TO. With the cold war over there is no immediate threat to our country. Unlike the US we don't try to project our national policies externally for the most part so we don't need 12 nuclear powered aircraft carriers etc.
Having said that to address your main point this is not the reason why we have a budget surplus. Canada used to have a small military AND a budget deficit because we had lots of wasted spending on social programs and not enough revenue. We increased some taxes and ALSO cut spending and now everything is golden (similar to the state of affairs in the US in the late 90s). That you guys blew the opportunity to be in a smiliar situation by massively cutting taxes and increasing discretionary spending is your own fault, don't blame it on military expenditures.
Re:Whose deficit is it, anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait until China unloads dollars! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now imagine the USA expected a surplus and made a huge tax cut because of it. And then the surplus never happened so a huge debt was created. Someone has to pay this debt off. Imagine if the people paying this debt off are the ones you are running a trade deficit with. Hence, our trading partner buys treasury bonds at an alarming rate.
This works great for the USA short term because we get cheap goods from China (because their currency is still of low value because they invest their profits right away) and save a little bit on taxes. Well, a lot if you're rich.
But as you're probably starting to realize, this can't go on forever. Eventually it's going to collapse. At some point the debts will have to be paid and this will be done by raising taxes and INTEREST RATES. So now not only is the dollar worth less because everyone has a ton of them around the world, but it costs a ton to borrow them so no one wants them.
All of a sudden the value of your house is half of what it was, the value of your paycheck is half, etc. A domino effect is created because no one can afford to borrow money any longer. American business doesn't take risks, people can't take risks, and money is tight. We haven't experienced this in a long time. Money has been cheap. It's been the USA's biggest seller. The dollar was valuable and it was available. That's prosperity. Imagine the dollar being expensive and worthless. That's a depression.
So expect the Canadian dollar to become more and more valuable against the USA dollar for awhile.
Re:Lopsided == Bad (Score:4, Interesting)
This reserve is thought to be the largest oil reserve in the world. It's the USA's wild card. These reserves have been known about for years but it wasn't profitable to drill them. Now they're finding there is more there than they ever thought.
Expect to be able to walk to Cuba on the tops of derricks in a few years.
I'm am not at all surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many reasons for weakeness in the US currency including but not limited to a massive government debt and a glutonous appetite for foreign oil.
Yesterday T. Boone Pickens was on TV on the business channel I sometimes watch. He made a number of interesting comments:
1) World oil production is about 85 million barrels per day and T. Boone does Not think it can be increased. The best information I have comes from expertize within the Geological Survey of Canada, but this expertise is certainly not limited to the GSC, and we are now pegging the peak of work oil production at September 2006. If production increases above that level then it will not be by much. T. Boone commented that the estimated demand for 4th quarter 2007 is 88 million Barrels per day.
Hence we will see the oil price driven up in order to destroy demand. In all likelihood it will get worse.
2) T. Boone says he favours nuclear and pointed out that General Electric says they can build a reactor in 3 years plus the friction added by the regulators and dealing with opposition. Probably this is correct.
3) Canada is ramping up Tar Sands as fast as we possibly can which explains why our economy is so strong. We cannot increase production has enough to make much of a difference. Currently we are investing billions per year.
Currently the USA consumes about 23 million barrels of oil per day.
Any way you want to slice it - this is not good news. It is clear the US dollar will continue to weaken is decades of political scrapping and decades of economic mismanagement finally face their day of reconning. As has been said many times, in order to avoid the melt down of our economies due to lack of energy availablity and high cost, we have to build at break neck speed an infrastructure that can replace oil and gas. We needed to start about 15 years before the peak of world oil production. We have not done so.
If the peak really was last year, then all hell is about to unfold and it will not surpise me to see gas rationing in the not too distant future.
Some things to remember.
Ethanol will not solve the problem. 100% of the US corn production will provide less than 2 weeks of liquid fuel. Next, ethanol from any source lives by the equation that 1 tonne of dry plant mass yields the equivalent of about 2 barrels of oil and this if we can do the conversion for free. This includes cellulostic ethanol.
We don't have the plants build anyways.
Industry runs under much tighter constraints than consumers. A consumer will simply give up a dinner at a restaurant in order to save the money to pay for his next tank of gas. Industry shuts down the plant and lays everyone off. We have already lost most of the North American fertilizer industry and plastic feedstock production (IE the pellets that go into injection moulding machines) is also going to die. Electricity production from Natural Gas is not threatened yet but expect power costs to continue to climb as this sector pushes out weaker sectors. In all cases jobs are lost and expensive infrastructure goes idle.
If one looks at the mortgage crisis and factors in the job loses precipitated by energy issues, then it becomes clear that this picture is not yet well understood.
Next consider how a government deals with recession? They print currency. Faced with the choice of inflation or recession, which do you choose? People on fixed incomes will lose their retirement.
Of course - one way to look at this is that its the retiring generation that lived beyond their means and created the mess. Their children certainly didn't. So maybe its poetic justice. However I do not think that people realize how bad its going to be. I watched my father-in-law lose his retirement because of the inflation Pierre Elliot (Idjot) Trudeau and his henchman Jean (Cretin) Chretien during the 1970's.
In part this
Not net EROI -ve Re:I'm am not at all surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing is that an individual farmer could do quite well running his farm machinery on ethanol that he produces himself. In fact, the average farmer has lots of free time all winter long and could produce all of his required summer fuel and still have lots of time for curling, hunting, fishing and bitching about why there is no money in farming... when in fact there is.
How do I know? I grew up on a farm and brewing and making wine is something I have done since I was in grade 11.
I do know what the input costs are and I can assure you Pimental did not. He made many assumptions that are not supported by facts. Nevertheless one of the things they were doing back then was running coal fired distillation and pushing it past the Aseotrop. To be energy +ve you need high efficiency vacuum distillation.
My point is that its not practical to do this from starch sources which is basically beer making. I think from cellulose it might make sense. The cellulose costs are going to be low, but we are still talking about 1 tonne of dry plant matter is equivalent to 2 barrels of oil once we do the conversion. With oil under $200 per barrel I do not think the economics look good. Next we do not have the technology in place yet.
The best ideas seem to involve enzymes derived from Trichoderma reeshi. This is a fungus isolated in Gaum during the 1940's. It is used for Stone Washer blue jeans since it does digest cellulose and it loves it in fact. The thing is most of the plant matter we have as feedstocks are not pure cellulose. They also contain pentosans and liganins and T. reeshi doesn't like these. There are other fungii which do like them. I work with some of these but not in the area of fuel production.
My point is that we are facing a bad bad problem and we do not at this time have in place technology which will do for us what we need. I for instance will not invest in an ethanol plant other than as a trade into the hype - and I have made quite a lot of money doing this.
Re:About time (Score:5, Interesting)
CDN book prices are a rip-off (Score:5, Informative)
Complain about it here: http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/ [competitionbureau.gc.ca]
Cars still have HUGE price disparity (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been looking at buying a car for months (hoping the price would drop on 2008 models but no they are exactly the same) and I WAS going to just buy it in USA and import it to Canada and save myself $5000+, but Honda has just emailed all their US dealership managers stating that if a buyer does this, the warranty is VOID for the vehicle in both US and Canada - your car won't be serviced under warranty even if you drive back down to the US to get it serviced. Obviously they are trying to protect their fucked up excessively-disparate market. Frankly, I don't even want to buy a car at all, now - I'll be paying 30% more than people a mere 20 minute drive from me will be paying for the SAME FUCKING VEHICLE.
On a more fortunate note, Toyota has stated rather loudly that they WILL honor the warranty of a vehicle purchased in the US and imported into Canada. So, obviously I am considering them at this time. Of course that still doesn't make me feel any better about the fucked up price disparity.
Re:Cars still have HUGE price disparity (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:About time (Score:4, Informative)