Canadian Oil Rush
This province (Alberta) is obviously in total "boomtown" mode.
New houses are going up like crazy and construction cranes are everywhere on the cities' skylines.
The smell of money is in the air. Prices are skyrocketing as they did in gold rush towns back in California when the "forty-niners" paid in gold dust. Jobs are plentiful; fast food workers are making four figures (over $10 per hour).
And the Canadian dollar is threatening to catch up with the U.S. dollar for the first time, I'm told, since before World War II.
It's an exciting time for young families and if I had one (a young family) I'd be very tempted to move to Red Deer -- what a nice city that is.
I'm interested to see whether the economy here in Alberta carries over to provinces to the east. Oil is the source of much of the riches, and the farther I travel from the oil reserves in northern Alberta, the less may be its impact.
My current home town of Merced has been booming and I recognize the effects of good times. Such things always follow cycles, however and the growing pains that can now be lubricated with money could become too-much, too-fast pains that may be harder to deal with if the boom goes bust.
Meanwhile, it's a great time to be in Canada -- all things seem possible and opportunities abound.
2 comments:
Has any government in or of Canada ever defined the value of the Canadian dollar? What is the Government of Canada’s current definition for the value of the Canadian dollar?
A “Federal Reserve Note” is not a U.S.A. dollar. In 1973, Public Law 93-110 defined the U.S.A. dollar as consisting of 1/42.2222 fine troy ounces of gold.
One lesson I'm learning while in Canada is just how U.S.-centric we Americans are.
I was defining the value of a Canadian as its relative price compared with the American Dollar.
Both of these currencies fluctuate as they relate to others in the world and the buying power of each moves up and down.
I believe the U.S. government used to tie the value of dollars to quantities of gold. But now money prices vary like stock prices -- they are market driven.
This is a bit off the top of my head; the part I'm certain of is the fact that I was guilty of the U.S.-as-the-center-of-the-universe mentality I mentioned above...
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