Canadian investors have been enjoying the parity between the loonie and the dollar. I've written about how savvy Canadian investors are snapping up prime California real estate at a 30% discount from last year. Essentially, the 20% drop in real estate prices, combined with the strong loonie, allows a Canadian investor to buy a million dollar condo in La Jolla for $700,000.
Automobiles are a different story. The "Mad Ape" voiced his understandable rage at the "new policies" from American automakers:
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)….remember that? It seems the North American Auto Industry has not. Or if they did, have chosen to ignore it. You know…the part where barriers can not exist as a protectionist mechanism.
In an October post on this subject, I wrote about how my wife was going to follow in her sisters footsteps and purchase a new auto in the USA. Well she started the process and quickly found out that the same car dealer is now refusing to sell to her because of a new policy that forbids them to sell to Canadians. Say what? WTF? Are these guys for real?
This is completely unfair. Tell me where the auto makers get off inserting blockages into the economic reality of a high Canadian dollar (~$1.07 US). Can you say ‘law suit’ boys and girls?
Mad Ape, you have every right to be indignant. We Americans are a proud people but we should also be a fair people. We won the Stanley Cup, fair and square. The Canadians won the economic advantage, these past few months, as fairly and as squarely as we won that trophy.
There are two definitive facts about the future: The Canadians will win back the Stanley Cup ( they are more zealous about hockey than we are) and the dollar will eventually gain back its value against the loonie. Fair, however, is fair. The Cup stays in Anaheim for one more year and Canadians should be allowed to gain their economic advantage, under the rules the Americans made, regardless of the outcome.
PS- One might think that an industry, that's getting its ass whupped, might do whatever they could to move the tin- I'm stumped.
A compendium of articles about how Canadian investors need mortgages from U.S. Banks:
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