The cost of gas, wear and tear on a car, as well as the time spent driving to Washington makes the $350 dollars look not so great a savings. If they could ship it up here for that price, that's a different story.
For yourself, you can have it shipped to where you live for a few extra dollars, although with some tires the Canadian manufactuers do have an exclusivity agreement.
From my house to the border is a 3 minute drive and than another 3 minutes to Oroville. So for me it's well worth it ship it there and pay the $4 holding fee and import it myself, plus buying gas down there I save another $20 a tank, and I can buy a lot of groceries for a lot cheaper. Really when the dollar is at par like it is right now, I save enough money buying a lot of my basic needs in the US that it easily offsets the extra taxes I pay to live in BC verses what I was paying in Alberta.
I have wondered if I could make a decent amount of money by picking stuff up in a place like Oroville, importing it, and than shipping it again once it crosses the border to Canadian customers. The brokerage fees that are charged can be pretty high. I actually ordered something on E-Bay where I was charge $15 for shipping. I had to send it back and the actual cost to send it was $10.30.
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i think it's already been destroyed, it just hasn't filtered thru yet. printing trillions of dollars with nothing to back it? the fed will crash.....it's gonna get ugly down there, and when america sneezes the world catches a cold....but this will be pneumonia..
Sorry to derail the discussion but I was wondering what are the problems with the massive growth of debt in the US? Wondering cause I'm guessing this will eventually hurt us. I have never heard of US politicians talk eagerly about paying it back.
i know the dollar is not easy to predict, but what are everyones thoughts on how far up the Canadian dollar will go up vs the american and when, also when do you think the canadian dollar will fall back to 90-95 cent range like it was last year? (if ever?)
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i know the dollar is not easy to predict, but what are everyones thoughts on how far up the Canadian dollar will go up vs the american and when, also when do you think the canadian dollar will fall back to 90-95 cent range like it was last year? (if ever?)
I read that one economist thinks that the Canadian dollar will peak at around $1.05 USD this year and to prepare for it to say that way indefinitely.
I personally don't know though and sometimes I doubt that economists do either.
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Nobody knows for sure but I think so long as Canadian and American economies improve then the Canadian dollar will be above parity. It will most likely drop the most at the end of the year when the US raises interest rates.
The huge foreign holdings of US dollars may start to impact the dollar even more if they decide that they want to convert back to their domestic currency i.e. they see to much volatility and negative impact of holding US currency.
Sorry to derail the discussion but I was wondering what are the problems with the massive growth of debt in the US? Wondering cause I'm guessing this will eventually hurt us. I have never heard of US politicians talk eagerly about paying it back.
When the news is uniformly good which is the case with the Canadian Dollar that is the time to be cautious. Things might continue to improve, but then again they might not. At these levels, the loonie is very vulnerable to any news that is short of very good. It needs the good news to continue just to hold its current valuation. I'm not sure what might go wrong, but bad news has a tendency to come when you least expect it, and from a direction that nobody is watching. The loonie could go up some more, or it could hold at these levels for another year, and I wouldn't be surprised at all. But the risks are skewed to the downside in my opinion, so I would not want to be aggressively long the loonie.
Because gold has never suffered a massive drop in price?
Don't knock the recent trade of the decadehttp://www.moneyweek.com/investments...ade-95102.aspx
although you can also throw in some Silver and Bronze and especially Copper (any base metal really) to round it out....Not sure about Gold but I am pretty sure that the USD will go down as the worst trade of the current decade....
Kinda OT but what the heck....
The original value investor......500 year old advice
"Divide your fortune into four equal parts : stocks, real estate, bonds and gold coins. Be prepared to lose on one of them most of the time. During inflation, you will lose on bonds and win on gold and real estate : during deflation, you lose on real estate and win on bonds, while your stocks will see you through both periods, though in a mixed fashion. Whenever performance differences cause a major imbalance, rebalance your fortunes back to the four equal parts."
Jacob Fugger the Rich
1459 - 1525
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There's this picture of one of those Y2K guys chilling in his bunker in the Science textbook we use. Whenever we come across it, the kids I teach howl with laughter (remember ... they were like 3 or 4 when all that was happening). I can't help it, but any time I hear someone advocating buying gold because everything's going to go to crap, I think of that guy in that picture.
Then I start going what if that guy is right? How big of a clown would you look like if bunker-guy was laughing at you for being stupid. Geez.
There's this picture of one of those Y2K guys chilling in his bunker in the Science textbook we use. Whenever we come across it, the kids I teach howl with laughter (remember ... they were like 3 or 4 when all that was happening). I can't help it, but any time I hear someone advocating buying gold because everything's going to go to crap, I think of that guy in that picture.
Then I start going what if that guy is right? How big of a clown would you look like if bunker-guy was laughing at you for being stupid. Geez.
has the system created a 'little boy who cried wolf' for us? y2k will destroy life as we know it. once it comes to pass with no issues, we tend to not believe any other 'look out for' scenarios. then when we least expect it....the wolf is at the door.
and that is all i'm trying to do. find the middle. the truth most often lies in between the 2 sides of every story. i don't believe in doomsday, but i also don't believe things will be rosy forever. i'm leaning to the cautious side because i believe it's a wise thing to do. i have a seed vault and a small precious metals collection in addition to my typical 'market' investments. hey, i'll win some and lose some, but my bets are hedged.
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Last edited by moncton golden flames; 04-06-2010 at 05:33 PM.
has the system created a 'little boy who cried wolf' for us? y2k will destroy life as we know it. once it comes to pass with no issues, we tend to not believe any other 'look out for' scenarios. then when we least expect it....the wolf is at the door.
and that is all i'm trying to do. find the middle. the truth most often lies in between the 2 sides of every story. i don't believe in doomsday, but i also don't believe things will be rosy forever. i'm leaning to the cautious side because i believe it's a wise thing to do. i have a seed vault and a small precious metals collection in addition to my typical 'market' investments. hey, i'll win some and lose some, but my bets are hedged.
Yeah, I didn't mean to come off as making fun of you at all - what you are advocating isn't a terrible idea at all. More poking fun of some of the guys you hear on Coast to Coast AM and such. I think, personally, it's pretty scary how much clout China has over the US since they've bought so much of their debt ... wonder when we'll see that all come down on the States.
