LogFAQs > #942879635

zebatov posted...

Its insane that our dollar is still so low then. I would expect 2008-levels of buying-power in the US if its economy was doing that poorly.

Have you not noticed that Canada has shut down to roughly the same extent as the US? More, even, since we've actually been taking it seriously on a national scale. Canada's been responding to Covid on roughly the same timeline as the US, and while our stats are looking much better (largely thanks to better compliance and lower population density), we're still just gradually reopening now. There's really no reason to expect the Canadian economy to be particularly soaring relative to the American one right now. Maybe in a few months when most provinces have been able to get up and running and half of America has died, but not just yet.

The Canadian dollar is also pretty closely tied to the price of oil. The ~2008 dollar was largely thanks to high oil prices at the time, and it dropping to the 0.70-0.75 range was largely due to them dropping. We're not exactly in a period of high oil prices at the moment. Gas prices aren't a conclusive indicator of crude prices, certainly, but when gas was dropping below 0.70/L a few months ago and is still ~25-30% lower than it usually is at this time of year, that doesn't exactly suggest that oil's in good shape (which is intuitively consistent with global behavioural changes).