NEW YORK STORES ACCEPTING EUROS

A little over-dramatic maybe, but Reuters have put a video on their site titled ‘Euros Invade New York’, describing how some stores in Manhattan’s East Village are now happily accepting Euros from customers. With the weak dollar enticing European tourists to spend it’s interesting to see some stores adapting to cater to these consumers. As Robert Chu, owner of East Village Wines explains “We had decided that money is money and we’ll take it and just do the exchange whenever we can with our bank”.

watch the video here

Filed under: stuff on the streets, economy, NY

WANT TO HIRE A COW?

We’ve seen cars, bikes, bags, even dogs as part of ever-expanding popularity of rental schemes, but this is the first cow-rental plan I’ve encountered! New Zealand agricultural provider and finance company PGG Wrightson have launched a new livestock leasing plan to help farmers combat the rising price of dairy cows.

PGG Wrightson finance general manager Peter Engel said New Zealand had 3.92 million cows, worth about $7.83b. In the last 12 months, the value of a single dairy cow has risen from $1250 to $2000, making the capital value of an average dairy herd worth around $700,000.

The option could be used by farmers wanting to convert to dairy and those wanting to buy more land, who needed to free up some capital, or sharemilkers looking to expand quickly. It could also attract equity partners who wanted to buy out other partners.

The plan is based on a five-year lease, at a cost of 2.7% per cow per month. The cows go back to PGG at the end of the lease. Farmers would own the progeny, letting them build their herds.

read more here

via Stuff.co.nz

Filed under: stuff, economy

BRING BACK RATIONING

There’s a really interesting article from this weekend’s Financial Times by Richard Tomkins which talks about ideas for the future of purchasing. It looks at how traditionally price altering prevented certain products being available to the masses, but now the problem is not the material possessions but dwindling natural resources and environmental issues, and offers a possible solution…

“How, I wonder, would people respond if the cost of motoring were pushed up to the point where only the very wealthy could afford to drive their cars and everyone else had to use public transport? Or if the cost of air travel were raised to the point where only the super-rich could afford to fly?”

“With just a little adjustment, it [rationing] could be updated to our more market-orientated times. We could each be given an annual quota of environmental credits, or e-credits, to spend as we wished on goods or services to which access was restricted on environmental grounds.”

bring back rationing

Filed under: visions of the future, consumption, economy