Well, it was fun while it lasted.... but

[astrozam]

Looks like our Canadian dollar is once again basically useless

[GEJ]

Zam-so is the stock market here.

[LiftedAWDAstro]

Stinks doesn't it. Seems like the US dollar is pretty much worthless as well with the way the government and economy are going. At least gas is going down.

[Kabey's Van]

Yeh I saw that too 80 cents "ouch".
It's good for exports but not for us buying.
Maybe our forest industry will pick up. We've had a lot of mill closiers on the Island because of the high dollar and the poor economy in the States.

[CaptSquid]

You mean Loonies and Twonies were worth something????

[Kabey's Van]

It was worth more than your Green Back not that long ago. In the last week it's taken a freefall to 0.80.

[Kidhauler]

They think that the loonie is going down because the U.S. is pulling in all their investments from over seas. This is causing the green back to be artificially high. As the states economy continues to go down the Canadian dollar will go back up to the 90 cent level or better within a couple of months. This will be faster if the Canadian economy stays fairly healthy and stable we will look like a better investment for other countries over the U.S.

[Kabey's Van]

Canuck buck is at a 5 year low 78.8 cents US.
15,000 more Americans "than expected" filed for unemployment last week. Not good.

[Cobra]

would you bee so kind to give us some good news now...

i have to get some foreign funds.... i should have done it last month....

[Kabey's Van]

Good news.....Hmmmm, We live in Canada.

[Cobra]

it snowed a little bit this week is it still good news....?

[Kabey's Van]

Your in the wrong province, 18c and sunny in Sooke.

[Rileysowner]

The explanation those in the industry are giving for the fall of the Canadian dollar are:

1) The fact we have a largely resource based economy that exports to the US and with the downturn their we can expect things to slow down in those parts of the Canadian economy.

2) Much of the value of the Canadian $ was because of the rise in the price of oil because we have a lot of oil. Now that the price of oil is dropping, so is the dollar.

3) It is because of central bank has dropped our interest rates to encourage economic growth to keep us out of recession.

4) Panic in the markets generally makes investors go to what they consider a solid currency and the USD has historically been seen that way.

In some ways I think it is a little of all of this, however, even having dropped in value, oil is still worth a lot and when we are at this price point before our dollar was worth more than it is now. Although the majority of our natural resources are sold south of the border, we also have a thriving manufacturing industry, not to mention these resources can be sold elsewhere and there is demand for them elsewhere in this world. Finally, although our prime rate was lowered, our economy is still strong, and unlike South of the border we may actually be able to avoid a recession and just have a slowdown. Finally if this is investors fleeing to a perceived solid currency, it strikes me that they will eventually realize that the current economic problems have their origin in the US and it is responsible for pulling the rest of the world down, then they may start to go to other currencies.

If these things are the case, we will probably see the Canadian dollar start to rise again but it may be a year or so. I wish I had paid for the conference I go to in May in PA a month or so back. Now it is a little late and I want to see what happens with the dollar.

[Cobra]

we also have a thriving manufacturing industry,

funny you say that we were talking about what canada produces and it's no joke when people say everything we make we export i almost never see stuff made in canada here in fact i see more stuff made in USA but even that stuff is hard to find

[Rileysowner]

Weirdly, I have found more and more stuff made in Canada, not to say it isn't vastly outnumbered by Made in China or even Made in USA, but I have lately (last several years) run into more Made in Canada stuff. BTW, that number decreased when the dollar when up probably because that made importing stuff more cost effective.