Forum Moderators: phranque
This does have some bad influence on the web business because it has customers/service around the world, Im sure Im not the only one, that want the dollar back on top.
zeus
That is until the $ starts rising again!
UK webmasters going to pubcon in FL should get a bit more bang for their buck!
payments into a US account and wait for a favorable interest rate
Good luck finding that one. US savings accounts are paying about 1% right now. And there is no change in sight.
In the mean time, I’m a happy camper because we can now sell product even to China, so our international customer base is growing.
zeus
-- Background --
I'm not trying to start a polemic when I say any of this. These are just politically neutral observations trying to predict what's going to happen with currency markets.
The tax cuts implemented by Bush are not going to go to the poor who would likely spend it fastest. It likely will get invested, but much of that could be off-shore. The costs of occupying Iraq and reconstructing Afghanistan, as well as coping with continuing insecurity are draining the US budget. I'm also hoping that there won't be another terrorist attack.
If oil-exporting countries switch to the Euro as the exchange currency for oil, importers will dump their USD$ reserves for Euros. I think this would be a practical decision (much of it is bought by Europeans), but the deciding factor will be political. Europeans have made moves towards a common space and scientific research program, as well as a shared defense (read: they want to stop buying US weapons and use their own). I don't think the move towards open-source software is innocent either.
(Again, feel free to disagree, but I'm not getting into an argument about any of this).
-- End Background --
I am pessimistic for the green-back. In any case, how exposed to currency risk are webmasters here? What are you doing -if anything- to reduce that risk?
One thing I am thinking of is positionning myself now to sell to Europeans (who will find our goods and services much cheaper). Selling from Canada might be easier than from the US as many Europeans might boycott US goods. If I were a US site, I'd be looking at Canada (many ecomm sites do a very poor job of marketing to us, not even accepting our postal codes in checkout forms, etc).
Europeans that now sell to the US would do well to look for other markets, including domestic ones. andy_boyd, I'd hate to be in your position right now.
Actually a lot did not go to the wealthiest. But they already spent it at Wal-Mart, etc. who now gets a lot of their stuff from China, so the spent dollars went off shore. The ‘tax cuts’ were not all on just taxed investments. People received checks from the US government. It’s not the tax cuts as I see it, it is debt and imports vs. exports and that is what the person who was retired from the Fed. indicated. I think the problem is much more in-depth than you allude to.
Well, gold is up. If one could convert the greenbacks into gold first, it might get around the problem of the falling dollar, but I have no clue if one could actually do that or not nor if it would, well, buy you anything.
