Yesterday's economic post--info, not whinging

I intended the post about economic issues to provide a little insight into the expat experience. If we were back in the US right now, we'd be confronting similar economic dilemmas. Buying a house in the US is probably fraught with the same more peril than here in NZ. A couple of foreclosures on your street, or a few dozen in your community, mean evaporating equity and declining value. Debi and I first moved to the Seacoast area not long after Pease AFB closed and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard went through massive layoffs. I knew people who lived in the Berwicks who couldn't sell their houses for anywhere near what they still owed on their mortgages.

Among our fellow recent expats, most of whom are from the UK, currency exchange rates are something of a spectator sport. Many of them follow the day-to-day fluctuations of their home currency as closely as they follow their favorite teams from back home. If the dollar were the Red Sox or the Patriots, things would certainly be different!