Dollar Hits Record Low Against Euro

Travel Blog  •  Joanna Kakissis  •  02.27.08 | 5:57 PM ET

imageThe dollar ended trading at $1.51 to the euro today, sending me into official crazy-lady mode. Are the other American expats living in Europe on modest dollar salaries also crying with me, or have they resigned themselves to a 2008 of $8 cappuccinos, $20 blocks of feta and sharply curtailed travel plans in the rest of the hyper-expensive continent?

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* An Expat in Athens: Hitting the Polls in Greece

Photo by jopemoro via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Tags: Europe

Joanna Kakissis's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, among other publications. A contributor to the World Hum blog, she's currently a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder.


3 Comments for Dollar Hits Record Low Against Euro

Terry Ward 02.27.08 | 7:55 PM ET

Ugh…so depressing. I feel your pain, Joanna. I felt genuine excitement landing at Dulles a few weeks ago and forking over only $1.60 - a dollar sixty!! - for a fountain drink at an airport Mexican joint. Just a few days before, I’d been balking on the Deutsche Bahn at a 4 euro equivalent drink (sans ice, to boot!).

Bill Dunlap 02.28.08 | 8:08 AM ET

Let’s put the euro in perspective.  It’s only been used in consumer payments since 2001.  Remember the French franc, the Deutsche Mark, Italian lire, et al.? They’ve been around for centuries.  I’ve been living in France since the ‘70s, and the dollar was always 4 to 5 francs… since decades.  Translated into euros, that means between 1.66 and 1.33 $ per euro.  I lived in France many years with the dollar barely above 4 francs to the dollar (or, in the $1.60/euro range). 

If you put this in a historic perspective, there’s no big deal.  The reason why it’s getting so much flak now is that there’s no bigger story to sell us (the press is always attracting eyeballs, to sell advertising). 

In short, nothing new under the sun.

—Bill

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