Boston is the New Vancouver
Filed under: US Elections
I'm always surprised at the superficial manner in which some idiots insist on seeing the devaluation of the U.S. currency. It has many benefits.
Reuters reported earlier this week, for instance, that Boston's film industry is now booming as it steals a huge number of Hollywood features away from such formerly attractive locations as Vancouver, Canada. Boston has cleverly combined an aggressive set of tax incentives with the falling value of the U.S. currency and marketed itself as a far more attractive location space for movies than Canada (it's a much older city with far more character and charm than anything Canada has to offer).
Result? This year's revenues from movie productions are more than double what the state got last year, totally a whopping $125 million in direct investment alone. How many more millions will the state reap when tourists start seeing sexy locations displayed in projects like "The Lonely Maiden" starring Morgan Freeman, Christopher Walken, William H. Macy and Marcia Gay Harden (or Denzel Washington's "The Great Debaters" or the Mick Jagger-produced "The Women" starring Meg Ryan) and flock to check them out?
(Good times are rolling in Boston, as right now they city is dominating both professional basketball and football with their Celtics and Patriots.)
Sure, the falling dollar means Americans can't so easily afford Japanese video games and televisions -- but it also means a strong incentive will be created for Americans to enter fields where previously they have been displaced by foreign competition. Jobs will be created, and American money will stay in American hands
Even as we speak, the government of Russia is locked in a desperate battle with inflation, a beast which threatens to price ordinary people right out of every market in the country -- and one of the reasons is the way Russia's currency has appreciated because of the rising price of crude oil. Russia has to stockpile most of its revenues from oil against the need to buy foreign currency and keep the ruble from fanning the flames of inflation into a conflagration.
So the next time you hear some dolt blabbering about the horror of a falling dollar tell to go to . . . a movie theater (maybe even one in Russia)!
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