{"id":10323,"date":"2015-07-23T05:53:30","date_gmt":"2015-07-23T10:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10323"},"modified":"2015-07-23T05:53:30","modified_gmt":"2015-07-23T10:53:30","slug":"plunging-loonie-means-inflation-in-store-don-pittis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10323","title":{"rendered":"Plunging loonie means inflation in store: Don Pittis"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"story-headline\">\n<h3 class=\"story-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/plunging-loonie-means-inflation-in-store-don-pittis-1.3163155\" target=\"_blank\">Plunging loonie means inflation in store: Don Pittis<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"story-deck\"><strong>Falling Canadian dollar means there are bargains to be had, but not for long<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Taking a shortcut through an underground\u00a0mall yesterday, I saw a couple\u00a0who looked like Pan Am visitors ogling the low price of\u00a0jewelry outside a little\u00a0downtown Toronto shop.<\/p>\n<p>Normally,\u00a0we think of U.S. prices being cheaper than anything you get north of the border.\u00a0But something special is going on with some Canadian\u00a0goods right now.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/canadian-dollar-drops-to-lowest-level-since-2004-1.3163316\">Canadian dollar falls to lowest level since 2004<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/weak-canadian-dollar-gives-visitors-a-reason-to-cheer-1.3157573\">Weak Canadian dollar gives visitors a reason to cheer<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As the Canadian\u00a0dollar trades at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/canadian-dollar-drops-to-lowest-level-since-2004-1.3163316\">lows not seen since 2004<\/a>, it\u00a0means that this year&#8217;s\u00a0July sales may offer the best\u00a0bargains you will see in a while. But it will come at a cost.<\/p>\n<h2>Statistical quirk?<\/h2>\n<p>The latest plunge is in some ways a statistical\u00a0quirk, as you can see in the graph below. By falling under\u00a077.85 cents US\u00a0\u2014\u00a0the low hit on March 9, 2009\u00a0\u2014\u00a0suddenly the loonie\u00a0was worth less that it had been through all the oil-boom years of the 2000s.<\/p>\n<div class=\"figure\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.3164027.1437599304!\/fileImage\/httpImage\/image.jpg_gen\/derivatives\/original_620\/dollar-chart.jpg\" alt=\"Dollar chart\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure-caption\">The Canadian dollar is trading at lows not seen since 2004. (CBC)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>While it may be just statistics,\u00a0there is also a reason why that\u00a0quirk may be\u00a0significant\u00a0to long-term pricing, ushering in a new round of sharply higher inflation.<\/p>\n<p>Some goods, like fresh food and energy,\u00a0can change on a day-by-day or a week-to-week\u00a0basis. If there is frost in Florida, a shortage of oranges shows up in grocery store prices within days.<\/p>\n<p>But for many other goods like clothes, jewelry, books, appliances and\u00a0cars, prices are far less volatile, says Victoria-based retail consultant Richard Talbot.<\/p>\n<h2>Last year&#8217;s prices<\/h2>\n<p>In some cases,\u00a0wholesale\u00a0prices for\u00a0goods already in the supply\u00a0chain were set\u00a0months\u00a0ago. Mom-and-pop retailers\u00a0especially\u00a0will often set their markup on the wholesale prices they paid\u00a0so that profit on current inventories will be calculated based on what they paid their wholesalers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Generally retailers order at least a year ahead of time,&#8221; says Talbot. &#8220;Until that stock is expended, the prices would remain much the same.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plunging loonie means inflation in store: Don Pittis Falling Canadian dollar means there are bargains to be had, but not for long Taking a shortcut through an underground\u00a0mall yesterday, I saw a couple\u00a0who looked like Pan Am visitors ogling the low price of\u00a0jewelry outside a little\u00a0downtown Toronto shop. Normally,\u00a0we think of U.S. prices being cheaper [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[103,1861,3544,3000,4936,426,2446],"class_list":["post-10323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-canada","tag-canadian-dollar","tag-cbc","tag-cbc-news","tag-don-pittis","tag-inflation","tag-loonie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10324,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10323\/revisions\/10324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}