Why YOU should care about the economy.

It’s not very often that I sit down and write about something somewhat serious. In the news you probably hear it a million times the day ‘The American economy is (choose your adjective)’,'It’s a bear market’ ,’Aig stole my bike‘ and just general doom and gloom. For the most part many of us have not been really hit. Some people have lost their jobs and maybe a reduction of their actual working hours. Some of us have to pull double time work because they lay people off. Other than that unless you’ve lost everything due to faulty banking practices, you’re pretty much in one piece. What the economy does affects everyone in different ways. When there’s inflation stuff costs more obviously, when things are bad sometimes get purchased cheap.
If you feel that this is not important and you can live day to day not knowing what’s going on, I’d say you were wrong. If you are a bit of a nut and like to travel to lets say Japan for some gaming goodness. What that boring old economy does is affect the exchange rate of the US dollar to Jpn yen.

For the utterly noobish folks exchange rate is the rate at which your country’s money exchanges for another country’s. Why is this is important? Other than helping people trade good it affects YOUR vacation. In 2007 i went out to Japan the exchange rate was 1 dollar for about 110 yen. When dealing with Yen the rule of thumb is to drop the last two zeros, so in this case it was pretty much 1 for 1,with you getting an extra 10 yen. It doesn’t seem like much but things add up quickly. The hotel for the two weeks my first trip was about 800 dollars. Yes two weeks in Tokyo for 800,you’ll be lucky to get that for a week in a hotel here. The second trip in 08′ the hotel was about 945 dollars. It was the same amount of yen just the dollar wasn’t as strong. Flash forward to this year when i booked my trip hotel is now about 1200. OUCH .

So for a few weeks I’ve been feverishly cheering on these markets. Paying 1 buck to play arcades and 5 tot play Gundam is one thing paying 1.50-2 bucks per game is another. It’s almost like a level from Elite Beat Agents or Ouendan.

Hey they worked for Obama right

This also messes with the long standing image that people had of big spending free money America and that free wheeling big capital spirit.

America! F#$K yeah!

On the bright side there’s still a chance that I can get mistaken for certain celebrities.Which could result in all sort of hijinks

It sucks that I never really had a chance to ‘be ballin‘ cause I was too young during the Clinton years. When the US was running shit and our dollar could buy a man’s daughter,farm and soul in most countries, hell maybe in a village in some cases. But things are cyclical and soon things will be back to some form of normalcy. And I’ll be knee deep in cool swag,hot girls and good snacks in no time.

Hopefully this time I won’t spend 9001 dollars on junk for other people who don’t deserver it. (There’s a girlie mag coming your way Berber). So I think this trip I’m definitely going to cut down on the late night trips to Roppongi and constant Japanese drink binges.

Until then at least there’s still that Obama wave to ride right?

4 more years!!!