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[DrEvil]

I've gotta tell ya, this parity has been awesome for me

I'm taking a trip to europe in the next month, and buying airfare and hotels at the .com's instead of .ca's has saved me tons of money, it's insane.

Oh, and the exchange rate w/ the Euro/GBP is great right now, too.

 

[Solo]

Im off to Las Vegas in 2 weeks, so this couldnt come at a better time.

 

[Deku]

this has always irked me all the way through business school

nationalists get so caught up with the relative value of their currency that its almost illogically farcical watching them rationalize it. During the nadir of the cdn dollar in the 2nd half of the 1990s, there was almost a pall in many Canadians, and fellow 'nationalist' students when the topic came to the value of the dollar.

Now that it's up, the chest thumping is even more annoying.

Currency values have to do with 2 things. supply and demand. And right now, there's a ton of greenbacks floating around.

 

[torontoml]

Wonder if it's a good time to buy some US dollars with my multi-coloUred moneys.

I'd wait, since the dollar is expected to go higher this summer. Right now most banks will exchange the dollar at about $0.97 American, when the dollar gets closer to 1.02-1.03 then you will be able to trade at closer to parity.

 

[trk_rkd]

I thought "devalue" meant "artificially inflate". In which case, no.

they could do a china & sterilise the inflationary effects by issuing government bonds when the new dollars come home from overseas. it's dangerous if you get it into the "perpetual spin cycle" like china (building up massive reserves of foreign currency they can't do anything with because of the huge inflationary effect it'd have if they spent it) but given that the high value of the canadian is probably down to some short term effects (gfc-related sovereign debt concerns elsewhere, basically) it might make sense for the government to do something like this as a *short term* stabilization strategy... print money, sell it on the foreign market to keep the dollar low, buy the money back off the domestic population with bonds when it comes home (so as to keep inflation down), resell the repurchased canadian dollars back onto the fx market to continue keeping the currency low... keep import/export relationship stable & build up your foreign currency reserves... issuing new bonds would in itself drive down the bond yields (by increasing the supply of the "safe" canadian bonds, the things which have made the currency so attractive in the first place)... quite win-win, almost a countercyclical measure: banking the good times now for a rainy day.

here in australia we have a "dirty float"... every now and again (read: crises) the Reserve Bank will intervene in foreign currency markets to stabilise the currency. not sure if canada's reserve bank has the authority to do something like this or if it has to go through gov't there (in which case it'd be too slow and probably politically challenging)

you just don't wanna peg too low or gear year economy to work like this long term, then you just wind up horribly indebted to your own population, with huge reserves you can't do anything particularly useful with (china). and as someone else mentioned: don't party too hard about your currency bouncing up given the damage it can do to your export markets. the agriculture sector here in oz is dead on its feet because of our high dollar (mining sector is doing fucking nice tho

 

[EvilMario]

Probably not deserving of a new thread, but the Loonie is at par for the last two days, or so. And not slowing down. A shame consumers will never see the benefits, except for cross border shopping, further hurting Canadian businesses.

http://www.thestar.com/business/article/875144--loonie-hits-parity-is-it-here-to-stay?bn=1

 

[BobDylan]

It will never beat the mighty dollar