You can’t blame Canada for trampling on the mighty greenback.
To the delight of many Canadians, their dollar – which they fondly call the “loonie” due to an engraving of a loon on the one-dollar coin – has finally gotten even with the American dollar.
The two dollars yesterday hit parity for the first time in 31 years as the greenback continued to sink in value against the world’s other currencies due to a new flood of cheap money from the Federal Reserve.
Investors around the world dumped the frail greenback on fears that the Fed’s latest moves at cutting interest rates by boosting money supply will hurt dollar-denominated assets.
The dollar set a 15-year low against a basket of six major currencies, while plunging to another all-time low against the euro at $1.41 before settling at $1.4074.
The British pound rose to $2.0099, while the greenback fell 1.3 percent against the Canadian dollar, making the greenback worth 99.87 cents. The greenback also fell 1.3 percent to 114.65 yen.
Canadians were tempted to abandon their national modesty and stick it to Americans for finally beating yanks at their own currency game, but most took their new pride in stride.
“There’s definitely a bit of pride. I have some American friends and they’re always saying ‘I got a Canadian quarter the other day. You owe me 10 cents’. So now it’s like ‘Yeah, yeah, we’re even now’,” said technical analyst Matthew Mellor in Ottawa.
Americans tourists seldom won admirers, arrogantly calling the Canadian dollar “Monopoly money” or the “peso of the North,” while reminding merchants a greenback was often worth 30 percent more than the loonie.
The last time the two currencies reached par was in 1976.
The Fed’s rate cut this week by a half percentage point to 4.75 percent sent the dollar into free-fall and pushed oil into a string of all time highs above $82 a barrel.