Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hx87 3616 days ago
Thanks to the magic of currency markets, I don't have to care about currencies either when I travel in Europe, even though I am American. Whenever I buy something, I use my credit card, and the charges are automatically converted to USD based on whatever the USD/EUR/GBP/etc rates are on that day.

The Eurozone can be a great idea, if some sort of fiscal union comes into being; otherwise the Euro will always be undervalued in the North and overvalued in the South, causing imbalances in investment and consumption.
1 comments
gonvaled 3616 days ago
So are the carrots you buy ecpensive? In april? Two years ago? Basically, you go to the supermarke, get your carrots and say: whatever, lets just get over with it.

Sure, you can get use to a new currency - it took us the best part of a decade to stop thinking in our old national currencies in the eurozone, and some people, and for some things, old currencies are still used mentally and in conversation.

The good thing in the Eurozone is: I dont need to. A currency must, above all, get out of my way.

link
hx87 3616 days ago
> So are the carrots you buy ecpensive?

Not a difficult problem: I just look up the latest local-to-USD conversion rates and do the conversion. If you have a largely cash economy, sure, multiple currencies are a bit of a hassle, but with electronic payments and on-the-fly currency conversion, you can do your accounting in whatever currency you want. It does not get in your way. Having a permanently over- or undervalued currency does.

link
gonvaled 3616 days ago
Sure you do: the problem is that you dont have the feeling of the currency: only when you pull your calculator and start typing numbers, you have an idea how high or low prices are. I am talking about a walk in the supermarkez, or a shopping mall, where you see lots of prices. Doing that en-masse and continuosly is not feasible for an individual.

Until your google glasses are translating prices in real time, give me my euro.

link
hx87 3616 days ago
It takes me about a week to get the feeling of a currency. It's more problematic if exchange rates fluctuate by large amounts, but a daily lookup takes care of that.
link