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."

Comments

Re:Article is useless without a graph!

[kebes]

Here's a graph.However it doesn't show parity because different markets trade at slightly different values, as explained in this news item:

"Currency trading is an over-the-counter market," a Bank of Canada spokesperson told CBCNews.ca. "It's not like the TSX." So there can be small discrepancies depending on the trades the data source monitors.

However that article mentions that "The loonie briefly reached $1.0003 US on foreign exchange markets shortly before 11 a.m. ET, the Bank of Canada said." and TFA says "The Canadian dollar reached $1.0002, before retreating to trade at 99.93 U.S. cents at 11:01 a.m. in New York." So that narrows down the approximate moment when parity was reached.

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:Benefits to a cheaper dollar

[benzapp]

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.

Whose deficit is it, anyway?

[fm6]

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?