Letters to the Editor
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That's one high-flying dollar...
Andrew, did you mean $97.41 or $0.9741? :)
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Blah
Leonard,
Take your pills. The current mess will be fixed in a year or so. Life goes on. The sky is not falling.
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Another secret about Canadians...
Psst, Andrew!
We also have a two-dollar coin. It's known as, get this, the "toonie." Because it has an image of, well, polar bears.
If we possess nothing else in this world, we have a sense of humour about our money.
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super duper high flying loonie!
whoops, thanks for catching the mistake on the exchange rate. i will fix.
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CDN
Damnit, I hate the current state of the Canadian dollar vs. the US dollar.. it is getting impossible to rid my Canadian friends on their monopoly money. Have to find something else... any suggestions? ;)
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rid=rib
Edit above.. rid=rib.
I type too fast for my own good ;P
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Loonie Wars
Leonard,
As Huricane noted, in addition to our one dollar loonie, the toonie is our two dollar "polar bear" coin. Specifically, its got the queen on the front with a bear behind.
Some "coincidences" I am sure HTWW will appreciate:
First, the current high-flying loonie is in stark contrast to a 30-year low of 1CAD = 0.6179 in January 2002. Our climb toward parity accelerated only after the start of the current war in Iraq (March 2003).
Second, the Canadian dollar has been valued higher than the US dollar -- the last time was near the end of the Vietnam War. The high occured in April 1974, with 1CAD = 1.0443 USD (i.e. you could buy a US Dollar for $0.9576 Canadian).
So, is the loonie really flying high on its own, or is it just another indicator of the disaster down south from another unnecessary war?
Love your blog!
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Western Nevada COUNTY
It's in California, northeast of Sacramento, north of Auburn (Placer County). The eastern edge of Nevada County does reach to Nevada, but it's a long, narrow county, so we don't visit Nevada often.
Construction in this area has been especially hard hit by the bubble busting, because Placer and Sacramento Counties were major bubble areas and had huge increases in construction over the last few years. Some of the construction companies have moved onto business construction, but there are still a lot of hungry contracters.
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western nevada county!
Argh. I was confused by that momentarily. Should have checked closer. I'll fix that too.
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Reality
The reality of the situation is that the "loonie" is not going "up".....it's that the US greenback is in the toilet.
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A few clarifications.
50% of building lumber and sheathing used in the U.S. does not come from Canada. Best figures I could come by without really getting into this is that the U.S. imported 9 billion BF of lumber Canada in the first six months of 2007. However, the U.S. produced almost 49 billion BF of lumber in 2006.
Depending on where you live in the country, you're using different lumber for framing. Most of the South from Florida to Texas is using plantation raised Southern Yellow pine, both for framing and sheathing. On the West Coast it's probably Hem-Fir from California, Oregon and Washington. The NE and upper Midwest may be getting lumber from Canada, but most of the house building in the country has been happening in the Sun Belt and in the West.
What you find coming from Canada primarily are Western Red cedar, chip products (OSB and Timberstrand). Otherwise . . .
As to the pine beetle, if it's destroying lodgepole pine forests in Canada, that's not "fiber" destined to be used in stick framing to begin with, unless it's chipped and becomes OSB. Lodgepole pine does not have the structural properties needed to be milled into framing lumber.
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thanks ikuiku
I should have linked that assertion about 50 percent of U.S. lumber from Canada to its source, which, admittedly, was a Canadian newspaper article that could justifiably be accused of bias. thanks for the additional info.