Over the weekend, the dollar dropped to a historic low (as far as I’m concerned). I’ve been keeping track of the good ol’ greenback since sometime in 1997. Today, I loaded all that data and graphed it out. Today, I weeped.
I first moved to Denmark, and bought an apartment, at the end of 1999. The dollar was doing OK. I lived here until early 2004. I sold the apartment later that summer. Not too shabby. The Danish Crown (DKK) was at around 6 to the dollar. I had originally bought at around 7. Granted, that’s a 15% drop in value. But my apartment hadn’t stagnated in value either. In those four years, it had appreciated by around 50%. And in 2001 and 2002, my purchasing power overseas was pretty sweet. Almost 9 crowns to the dollar.
But egads, look at the dollar now. For the first time since I started keeping track of these things, it’s now less than 5 Danish Crowns to the dollar. This means as an American, I can’t buy squat over here. And now that I work for an American company, getting paid in American Dollars, it is starting to get painful. Save me, Barrack Obama!
