From our friends at Economy.com we learn of a new international currency comparator: The IPod inedx. From their table below Australia, Indonesia, Canada, and Korea are selling the IPod for less than $140. Argentiana, Brazil and Russia over over $250. This index gives you a good indicator of which currencies may decline in the future and which are more likely to rise.
>Just what we needed: A way to track shifts in global purchasing power that fits in your pocket. And is less greasy & caloric than the alternative...
Australia is the cheapest place in the globe to buy an Apple iPod, highlighting just how far the currency has plunged since July. The CommSec iPod index shows that Australia is the cheapest place of 62 countries to buy an Apple iPod 8gb nano music player when measured in US dollar terms.
The value of the iPod index is to highlight implications of currency changes and country relativities.
In other words, it's an update of The Economist's Big Mac Index. If you're clueless, all it takes is a common good or service that's sold in identical form the world over. The local price is simply converted to a common currency (typically U.S. dollars, though I wonder for how long?) and you can see who's living how high, in relative terms. Pretty neat.<
Perhaps this is a little better than the Big Mac Index. It's more currency, and it reflects relative currency valuation more precisely than the Big Mac. After all, the Big Mac takes a lot of locally prices labor and vegetable prices, as well as local rents. The IPod is made in America and shipped, whole, to each country where it is sold. To me, this makes it a more pure reflection of local currency value.
No comments:
Post a Comment