Weak Dollar

Entries Tagged as 'Weak Dollar'

How Much Gas Can an Ounce of Gold Buy?

23 April 2008 · Comments Off

Economy

For quite a while, I’ve been wanting to put together a chart examining the cost of gas in terms of something harder than the U.S. Dollar…but I’ve never gotten around to tracking down the hard data myself.

So, I was pleased to see that Rick Powell posted the average price in US Dollars of a gallon of gas and an ounce of gold at the start of each year from 1998 through 2008 in a discussion on oil prices on misc.transport.road.

Raw data like that can be used to make an interesting-looking chart:

[Gallons of Gas per Ounce of Gold]

I should admit that the chart is, arguably, a little “dishonest”, in that one makes some potentially inappropriate assumptions when assembling a chart like this.   Specifically, there’s an implicit assumption that an ounce of gold is a stable unit of value, which ignores some of the distorting effects of speculation, investment, and industrial demand on the commodity.

However, I think it does help make the point that the high prices we pay for petrol at the pump are somewhat distorted by other financial trends which also impact us.  For example, the real buying power of an American dollar is not what it once was.

Tags: Economy · Energy · Gas Prices · ·


Euros Being Accepted in American Businesses

6 February 2008 · Comments Off

Economy

[Photo by Claudecf @ Flickr] When even New York City shopkeepers like Euros, you know that the dollar is showing signs of incredible weakness.  From Reuters:

In the latest example that the U.S. dollar just ain’t what it used to be, some shops in New York City have begun accepting euros and other foreign currency as payment for merchandise.[...]

While shops in many U.S. towns on the Canadian border have long accepted Canadian currency and some stores on the Texas-Mexico border take pesos, the acceptance of foreign money in Manhattan was unheard of until recently.

Not far from Chu’s downtown wine emporium, Billy Leroy of Billy’s Antiques & Props said the vast numbers of Europeans shopping in the neighborhood got him thinking, “My God, I should take euros in at the store.”

Leroy doesn’t even bother to exchange them.

Maybe I should have taken advantage of the multi-currency ATM I spotted when changing planes at Dulles a couple of weeks ago….

Tags: Economy · ·