What do you think the US to Euro exchange rate will be in 18 months
 

About the same.

You managed to post 3 paragraphs of bullshit and still not answer the question.

I am not an FX speculator, but FX plays a huge role in my financial well-being and will for the foreseeable future.

What I can do is read some blogs/etc (Which I do, and would be glad if anyone would point me to more) and learn about other people's observations (because they also make up a minor component of the market, and normal people as a whole make up a potentially major component of the market).

JM

The former would be infinity or undefined.

I'll say 1.2, based on the PIGS dominos all falling down and my own chutzpah.

I don't care about the Euro. I just want the Pound to go down relative to the Dollar to make my purchases cheaper.

I've been reading some pretty bleak outlooks recently.

On the up side every young Greek with remotely any talent will soon be in either North America or Northern Europe so I see cheap but authentic Greek restaurants in our futures. http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/wink.gif

Are you parodying your own incessant tendency to relate everything to trendy cuisine, or do you honestly think that way? Even if it's the latter, it'd probably be better for everyone involved in this thread if you simply claimed the former.

I thought the winking smilie was enough to indicate that it was a joke. Missed that did you?

You could convey some useful information to the people in this thread. For example, you know what financial instruments to look at to get a general idea of the market expectation. [IIRC they show that the expected exchange rate in a year is about the same as the expected exchange rate now.]

You also seem to have a good self-taught knowledge of monetary economics, so you're probably aware that "which currency purchases more per some arbitrary unit" is a very different question than "how many people are willing to use this currency?" If I say a Euro will probably go for about $1.20 next year, that doesn't imply I think that the Eurozone will be healthy.

The market expectation for next year is obviously priced into the current value.

I am not trying to beat the market, just determine when I should start looking for a new job.

JM

In 18 months, the people of Europe will be melting down their Euros for makeshift ammunition to hunt with. Their prey? The deadliest quarry of all: MAN.

Which Euro, the Southern or Northern one? http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/cute.gif

USD to PHP is the one I watch. I predict it will briefly spike to 1000:1 the quickly return to ~43:1 the next time I go to the bank as I am trying to be more optimistic...

Like the US? http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/wink.gif

Dollar index dropped something like 25% from just a couple years previous in 2008 didn't it? Commodities adjust on the fly of course. Wages certainly did not.

Over here in the Philippines it was the opposite story. PHP appreciated about 20% against the dollar from 2009 to 2010. Wages didn't drop because of it.

But if you had known this was going to happen, and you had two similar jobs (salary at the time) denominated in USD and PHP respectively... you'd have been much better off in terms of change in purchasing power to take the PHP one. (Or if back during the Asian financial crisis when PHP went from 2:1 to 40:1 against the dollar, you'd have been much better off with the USD denominated salary job.)

It sounds like Jon is trying to determine if a similar situation will develop in regards to his current job in Europe vs potential jobs in the US.

Damn it, KH! Just tell us when to buy and sell!

This is an interesting question to which I am unable to offer a good answer. But I'm watching with interest as things blow up slowly. It's amazing to watch the tail wag the dog.

Do you think Spain is going the way of Greece? There appears to be considerable panic right now.

Greece is a world apart from Spain. In many respects, Spain works. Greece doesn't even have the institutions necessary to maintain a first-world economy -- e.g., it was impossible to know how much it was spending, even as minister of finance.

That said, Spain is being pushed into the same corner that Greece put itself in. Greece is a failure of Greece, but I view Spain as a failure of Europe.