The American Looney

Last week I took the subway in Boston. My trip was $1.90 and I put a $20 bill in the ticket machine. Out popped my ticket and EIGHTEEN DOLLAR COINS (and a dime). I had no idea the US had a mass-circulated dollar coin, and I felt like I one a jackpot at a casino with all the coin clanging going on.

I heard that they did such a poor job of letting people know that they were implementing a dollar coin that many businesses refused to accept them.

Am I the only one that thinks parity is a horrible thing for our country? I mean, not only will it reduce the influx of people coming north of the border for cheaper goods, but I also now get paid less 'real' money from my clients in the US.

Yeah, I know it's selfish of me to think that, but hey, I never pretended otherwise, did I? =)

There's a graph from Yahoo!Money that shows the exact moment we hit parity yesterday.

There's that saying, be careful how you treat people on the way up, cuz you'll meet those same people on the way back down. Unfortunately, America has been cocky and not been all that kind to anyone, and now that America is tanking out, I cannot blame anyone for poking fun at us.
On that note...coming up saturday to catch Rush in their hometown!!! Yeah, baby!

Dollar coins are not popular here in the States, and can generally only be found in automated ticket machines (as Jerrold found out in Boston). They are accepted everywhere, but rather rare.

Sameer, you are quite correct. It's fun for a while to think about the newly-powerful dollar but for an economy built on inefficent exporting, watch out. The auto sector is toast, all of the light manufacturing along the 400 that has been supplying US building sites is double-toast (no more housing market in addition to the dollar), and tourism will now consist solely of waves of Mexican "refuguees" showing up in Windsor, chasing the higher Canadian minimum wage (see http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/us/21refugees.html). Consumers will meanwhile stop buying because they will be waiting for the 80-cent dollar retail prices to fall, which won't happen for two years. Enjoy the parity jokes while they last, because this is going to be gut-wrenching.

Parity? More like parody.

A HAHAHAHA!!!!

Serieusement, it isn't really helping things. For my company we actually get a benefit because a lot of the things we outsource to the states just became a whole lot cheaper, but in terms of national economy and our import/exports this whole parity business isn't helping at all. It'd be fine if we were physically attached to ANY other country in the world, but that ain't the case. Some other sites think parity is the freakin' bee's knees because our dollars can't be compared to monopoly money anymore. If seriously wish our dollar was worth about 75-80 cents on the USD.

Call me when I can buy a Wii in Toronto for $230 CAD, then I'll tell you parity both exists and is worthwhile.

As a U.S. citizen studying in Toronto my problem is that everything I buy is considerably more expensive then it would be buying it in the States. It's sort of a mega bummer.

as a US citizen studying in Toronto, you might also want to learn about the use of the word "then" and "than" : - )

Everyone's talking about how this is going to reduce trade with America. Is there a chance of it increasing trade with the rest of the world?

will you get sued by the royal canadian mint for using a photo of a loonie?

Golly Steve, didn't have to be so snarky about my then use. Everyone makes mistkakes :-(