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Canadian Dollar Reaches Parity with US$
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."
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.
The problem is we have no native industry for the vast majority of things Americans desire. We also are a net importer of food and energy.
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.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
I still want to know why all the books in the book store, and magazines, have the US price at 2/3 of the Canadian price, when the exchange rate hasn't been that bad in years.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Not at all !
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 219$ (or BestBuy.ca)
Same Ipod nano at 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.
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
Actually the value of the CAD has as much to do with the fact that Canada is an exporting nation as anything else. The CAD hit bottom against the USD in 2002 and has been climbing ever since almost in lock step with the rise in value of the commodities it exports. The continued fall of the USD will likelly push commodities higher and so companies exporting commodities will not feel a great impact. That, in turn, should prompt more foreign investment in comodity producers which (directly and through a knock on effect) will increase the number of Canadian jobs.
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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Anybody else think it's ironic that at a time when people are resisting government run health care because of the expense, the Canadians are running a budget surplus — despite have government run health care?
There was a short blurb in the paper the other day about how you could buy an Audi S4 in Great Falls for around $48,000 USD, and here in Calgary the same car will set you back $72,000 CAD. There were a couple other examples (Nissan Murano $35,000 USD vs. $50,000 CAD, BMW something $58,000 USD vs. $68,000 CAD)
You think that's bad? It's the exact same thing with cars, too. When you're looking at buying a $49k car (Subaru WRX STI) and you see it's only $33k in USA, well, that's just pure bullshit. I have yet to read ANY reasonable explanation for this extreme disparity.
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.
You know you are right. The last time this happened was in 1976 - right at the end of a U.S. spending spree called the Vietnam war.
The U.S. borrows to pay for a war, and our currency goes to SH*T.
And now we have tons of middle eastern enemies, just like then, plus we're cresting hubbert's peak. I wonder if we'll have another 1980's stagflation real soon, or if the Feds will be able to keep the ship running smoothly..
We're also going to be selling the T bills we bought to store the Social Security Surplus in in order to pay for retiring Baby Boomers.
What's next? Who knows..
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It was David Pimental from Cornel and others who first proposed this myth. Its simply not true. In fact the energy return is quite decent.
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.
Actually, oil has approached a level in cost where drilling the Gulf of Mexico is now profitable. Chevron holds a lot of drilling rights to this area.
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.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer