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| Liz Burke |
Did anyone else let out a little squeal when our dazzling dollar made its brief foray into world domination, leaving the economy in a state of AUDelight? For just short of an hour late Friday night we got there, soaring to a high of $US1.0003, the highest the dollar’s been trading since float, before pulling back to just under parity state.
While this is good news for some (hello, Topshop!) and not so much for others (sorry, exporting industries), there’s no denying its significance. And so, in the tradition of newsworthy celebration inspirations, I’ve decided to mark this occasion with a homage to the year that started it all: 1983.
In that year, so I'm told, the Hawke Government made the decision to float the dollar. It was also the Year of the Cabbage Patch Doll and Mircosoft Word. But more significantly, a little mixtape called Thru the Roof ’83 was released.
Purchased by everyone with enough newly market-influenced pocket money, it spent five weeks at the top of the Aussie album charts. Who knew that 27 years later these seemingly unrelated events would finally find a link, as the Aussie dollar took on the direction of its musical birthmate and really went thru the roof?
Side a
1. "She works hard for the money" – Donna Summer. A fitting tribute to the Australian economy and its rough and ready recovery from the GFC. She’s certainly been working hard to come back from that, so you better treat her right!
2. "All time high" – Rita Coolidge. Under that windswept perm and copious eyeshadow sliced awkwardly between Bond scenes, Rita had more centsibility than Moneypenny herself, the prescient Octopussy theme’s chorus providing a view of what would happen in the Australian money market 28 years on.
3. "One on one" – Hall & Oates. $US poster boy George Washington and our currency’s marsupial pin-ups certainly played that game on Friday night, seeing AUD finally nudge the greenback off its turf.
4. "Down Under" – Men at Work & 5. "Australiana" – Austen Tayshus. These two speak for themselves, really, throwing in a bit of national pride. If the portrayal of our fellow countrymen in these film clips was nothing to be proud of, at least we now have a thriving financial market to make up for it.
Side b
6. "Too shy" – Kajagoogoo. The dollar is falling just shy of the parity mark, though many economists are speculating a not-far-off rise to as high as $US1.10. While a rapid increase could be dangerous and stabilisation equally so, everyone’s keeping hush hush as to what’s going to happen...
7. "After the fall" – Journey. The fall of the USD that is. RBA intervention? Rates hold? An online shopping revolution? Or an even stronger formation of the Australian Contiki army taking advantage of international exchange rates?
8. "I’ll tumble 4 ya" – Culture Club. The USD has indeed taken a gracious tumble, and more stimulus to aid recovery could definitely be on the cards. An economic equivalent to whatever Boy George used to keep his fringe upstanding could certainly keep a weakening economy afloat.
Nb. Popular finance-themed cocktails have been omitted from this post to provide a more wholesome Parity Party experience . What’s worse than starting a day on the trading floor feeling All Ordinary? (boom tish!)
See also:
Federal Election Party Time!
Yours truly,
Liz @ Girl With a Satchel
2 comments:
what an awesome post!!
haha loved the ending
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