Par!

[bjarvis]

This morning, the Canadian dollar was at par with the US dollar. Only five years ago, the loonie was at $0.62 USD.

This says more about the relative weakness of the US dollar than anything else, and I see the weakness as directly related to enormous trade and budget deficits. While a weak US dollar might be useful to correct the trade imbalance, it's an uphill battle: as of last week, the US' largest trading partner isn't Canada but China, and China loosely pegs their currency to the US dollar in large part to maintain the trade imbalance in their favour.

Comments

[pectopah.livejournal.com]

Seeing as how I live in Canadian $ and earn in US $, my life has become more and more expensive. Yahoo! Canada points out that Canadian prices probably won't start dropping anytime soon. Although since the rise of the loonie has started people are starting to ask out loud why books and some other US imports in Canada are so much more expensive for no apparent reason. There's lots of hemming and hawing.

I expect to see far more Quebec and Ontario license plates in Vermont in the coming days. Canada recently changed the duty-free exemption limit from $200 to $400 for absences of 48 hours.