Business Blog: Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

Back when currency ratios were fixed, it was landscape all the way. These days . . . good question. James Surowiecki of The New Yorker asks questions that remind me of what I wrote in my initial “landscape and weather” post:

How can Americans, with their love for foreign goods, remain indifferent to the dollar’s drop? Mainly because so far it has had surprisingly little impact on our standard of living. Inflation, for instance, has remained solidly under control—the economy’s core inflation rate was about two per cent over the past twelve months, and it hasn’t been much higher than that in recent years. Even more surprisingly, the prices of imported goods have gone up only slightly. If you travel abroad, you feel like a pauper. Yet if you stay at home you’d be hard-pressed to notice any difference from a decade ago, with the notable exception of the price of oil.

Link.