Canadian Dollar hits par with sad, sad, U.S. dollar.
Warm up the car, it’s time for some cross-border shopping! Yes, for the first time since 2007, the loonie has achieved parity with the sad, sickly, mostly-Chinese-owned U.S. greenback. And according to pretty much everyone, it’ll hover near or above par for the coming months, maybe years.
From the Globe:
Nonetheless, it’s hard to find a reason that the currency would drop more than a cent or two any time soon. Rising oil prices and a greater appetite for risk are pushing investors away from currencies like the U.S. dollar and toward those linked to commodity prices and strong economic growth. That’s on top of longer-term factors, such as central banks around the world buying Canadian dollars to diversify their currency reserves amid questions about the greenback and the euro and, more immediately, mounting signs that the Bank of Canada will start raising interest rates in June or July, well before the U.S. Federal Reserve Board.
Sure, it’s not great for Canadian manufacturing, which relies heavily on trade with our recession-drowning neighbours to the south, but it still feels good to know that our obsessive online shopping will cost a little less moving forward.
links: Yahoo!, The Globe and Mail
