Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Canadian Dollar



The shaded areas represent economic contractions.

We just aren't able to buy as many Canadian dollars as we once could.

Things that might be noteworthy:

  1. Our US dollar was falling (relative to the Canadian dollar) heading into our last consumer recession (early 1990s).
  2. Our prosperity boom of the 1990s coincided with a rising US dollar.
  3. Our US dollar has been falling right off the side of a cliff during this latest boom.
  4. Ben Bernanke had/has a large holding of Canadian Treasury bonds.
Fed Governors’ Financial Disclosures: 2005
In addition to his TIAA-CREF savings, his largest holdings continue to be a Wachovia money market account and a collection of Canadian treasury bonds (each valued at $50,001-$100,000).

Source Data:
FRB: Foreign Exchange Rates
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

10 comments:

  1. Mark,

    Frank Barbera has some nice chart of the Dow priced in Canadian and other currencies out today.


    http://www.financialsense.com/Market/wrapup.htm

    Kevin

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hard to be a deflationist when the government is content on debasing the currency, isn't it?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yup and spending us in to oblivion.

    Federal employees wasted at least $146 million over a one-year period on business- and first-class airline tickets, in some cases simply because they felt entitled to the perk,
    congressional investigators say.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071003/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/government_travel_waste;_ylt=A9G_Rz8t9gJHJgABmxes0NUE

    Lots of prosperity here.
    Kevin

    ReplyDelete
  4. In August, the civilian labor force edged down to 152.9 million

    I heard American workers were productive that's only $954,872.40 each of course if you take out government employees who are a tax it might skew the division.

    Kevin

    ReplyDelete
  5. Kevin,

    I'm one of those dang gubmint employees everyone loves to bash and in the agency I work for there ain't' no such thing as first class seating - except for the so-called public servants who owe their position to political connections. I couldn't get the link to work but it would be interesting to see if the congressional report bothers to evaluate who is actually flying in the first class seats. I'd bet the lion's share happen to have jobs in the greater Washington DC area, are in the "senior service" pay category, and started working for the gubmint after the 2000 election.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "I'd bet the lion's share happen to have jobs in the greater Washington DC area"

    Me too, most of the rot is at the top, but I have no use for either party as both are guilty and this country is broke if we include off-balance sheet entitlement programs.

    However you feel about it Kwark government has to be paid for either from the privet sector or by borrowing, most of your wages and the taxes you pay came from one of those sources, I'm not saying they are all unnecessary jobs.

    One of my daughters is a state employee in CA and she makes twice the median wage in that state. Great for her, bad for the people making the minimum who have to pay for it. If it weren't for their union those jobs could be done in the privet sector for a lot less.

    Kevin

    ReplyDelete
  7. Kevin & Kwark,

    I found a rebuttal. This should help clear things up.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyhxqIzAKdY

    ReplyDelete
  8. Works for me Mark lol
    Kevin

    ReplyDelete
  9. BAKERSFIELD -Firefighters have dangerous, difficult jobs. They work long hours in a profession that can kill a person on the job.

    But it’s become an extremely lucrative job, as well.

    Newly-released financial records show one county firefighter is paid close to $175,000 in overtime.

    http://www.kget.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=4428ad0a-8ad1-47d0-b5fd-e159403d0496

    The Bakersfield Californian was among the newspapers that successfully fought for the release of these records.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Wow. That's some serious overtime. The guy must live at the station.

    I worked 30 hours straight once as a programmer, but all I managed to get for it was being exhausted, lol.

    ReplyDelete