The dollar is now higher now than it has been in over a century:

The Canadian dollar surged to a modern-day high against the U.S. dollar late Wednesday after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates again and oil prices surged to another all-time high.

In after-hours trading, the loonie went as high as $1.0617 US, eclipsing the previous 50-year high of $1.0614 US set on August 21, 1957.

That’s the highest the Canadian dollar has climbed since it was allowed to float in 1950.

You have to go back more than a century to find a time when the Canadian dollar was worth more.

According to a history of the dollar posted on the Bank of Canada website, the U.S. dollar plunged in 1864 as the Confederate Army approached Washington during the U.S. Civil War and the Union government temporarily shut down gold trading.

Simply unbelievable. It is higher than it has ever been in modern economic history, which is just insane.

Prob of 1.10 by end of year ~60-70%.

Prob of 1.10 by end of November 45%

1337hax0r

Why do I cheer the price of oil going up? Not because I am an Albertan (because most of that money will be squandered away by rich corrupt oil execs anyways), but because as it goes up other environmental and good alternatives become more viable, and people will simply be forced to be more environmental. From Wired:

Long-term price per barrel: $30-$70
Energy Sources Unleashed:
Natural Gas
Conventional compressed methane - clean, efficient, and explosive

…

Biodiesel
Vegetable oil pressed from soybeans and palm

Ethanol
Gasoline-compatible alcohol fermented from corn, sugar, and cellulose

Long-term price per barrel: $70 & up
Energy Sources Unleashed:

…

Hydrogen
The most common element in the universe, and a superclean energy source

Plug-in Hybrids
Grid electrons propelling cars for short trips

If the government won’t get off their butts and do something about it, maybe by driving the price of oil through the ceiling, ordinary people will start to think more environmentally.

Then again, this feels a lot like the boiling frog scenario to me.

1337hax0r

As I discussed before, I would not be surprised to see the dollar hit $1.10 before the end of the year, giving it about a 50/50 chance at this point. Especially with oil reaching $93 and still rising.

From the CBC:

The Canadian dollar continued its upward charge Monday, reaching its highest level since March 1960.

The loonie was quoted at $1.0460 US in early-morning trading, up almost two-thirds of a cent from Friday.

That brought the Canadian dollar to within a cent and a half of its postwar high of $1.0614 US, set in August 1957.

…

The U.S. dollar fell to a record low against the euro on Monday. On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve is widely expected to cut its key overnight lending rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.50 per cent.

That would equal the Bank of Canada’s overnight lending rate and would erase the interest rate differential between Canada and the U.S.

1337hax0r

Last year, we lost a ton of honey bees worldwide due to colony collapse disorder. Now, it looks like an entire species of bumblebee has gone extinct, as well as two other species of bumblebee have gone from common to rare. Now, I am not a huge insect fan, but it’s really frightening when this happens and no one understands why. Especially when a significant portion of our food is pollinated by these insects. In fact, 15% of all crops in the states use domesticated bumblebee hives, and if they all die off, someone needs to pollinate those crops. So, there is either a ton of money to be made for artificial pollinating machines or these issues need to be resolved quickly.

From the article:

… if bumblebees were to disappear, farmers and entomologists warn, the consequences would be huge, especially coming on top of the problems with honeybees, which are active at different times and on different crop species.

… There is no smoking gun yet, but a recent National Academy of Sciences report on the status of pollinators around the world blames a combination of habitat lost to housing developments and intensive agriculture, pesticides, pollution and diseases spilling out of greenhouses using commercial bumblebee hives.

… A huge problem facing scientists is how “appallingly little we know about our pollinating resources,” said University of Illinois entomology Prof. May Berenbaum, who headed the National Academy of Sciences report.

Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland, worries that on top of pesticides and narrowing habitats, disease could be the last straw for many of the bee species.

“It definitely could all come crashing down,” he said.

1337hax0r…..