[LINK] Some Friday links

• Centauri Dreams has two posts that particularly interested me, the first one regarding the use of masers to propel interstellar probes at substantial fraction of light speed, the other one speculating how the moons of extrasolar planets could be detected.


• Daniel Drezner reports on how the Argentine government plans to pay its future bills by nationalizing private pensions.


• Inkless Wells links to a Ross Douthat article suggesting that American Republicans should model themselves on the model of Stephen Harper's Conservatives in order to recover.


• Joe. My. God reports about the frankly unsurprising news that Jörg Haider, Austrian neo-fascist famous for fighting against Slovenes in his native Carinthia and scorning immigrants, had a long-time male lover.


• Norman Geras wonders if the concepts of "immortality" and "not dying" are really the same.


• Spacing Toronto links to a notice of upcoming changes to the Dufferin TTC station and suggests that the Toronto Reference Library should be renamed after urban theorist Jane Jacobs.


• Strange Maps links to one map of the Kingdom of Araucanian-Patagonia and another of Liechtenstein's very complex collection of communes.


• Wis(s)e Words features a news story explaining how, if the Nepalese royal family doesn't pay its bills, the new government will cut them off.

[LINK] "Canadian Dollar Heads for Worst Month Since 1950; Bonds Rally "

Bloomberg's Chris Fournier has an interesting article outlining the impressive fall in value of the Canadian dollar. I didn't know it was this bad in a historical context.

Canada's currency is headed for its worst monthly fall since at least 1950 and the yield on the two-year bond touched the lowest in almost two decades on speculation the economic slump will deepen and oil will decline further.

The loonie, as the currency is known because of the aquatic bird on the one-dollar coin, touched the lowest since September 2004. Crude accounted for 10 percent of Canada's export revenue in 2007.

"We're right off the charts in terms of how big this decline is," said Doug Porter, deputy chief economist with BMO Capital Markets in Toronto. "We continue to see tremendous volatility in all financial markets and that's most definitely affecting the currency markets as well."

Canada's dollar declined as much as 2.9 percent to C$1.2842 per U.S. dollar, from C$1.2472 yesterday, the lowest since Sept. 23, 2004. It traded at C$1.2734 at 2:24 p.m. in Toronto. One Canadian dollar buys 78.53 U.S. cents. The currency is down 7.2 percent since Oct. 17, its fourth straight weekly decline, the longest losing streak in almost a year.

The loonie has dropped 16 percent since Sept. 30, the most in a month since 1950, according to Bloomberg and Bank of Canada data. The Canadian dollar was fixed to the U.S. currency from the founding of the country's central bank in 1939 until after World War II, according to the bank's Web site. It was allowed to float from 1950 until 1962, and then again from June 1970.

"Overnight we've seen the Canadian dollar go from a little burst of strength to incredible and further weakness," Porter said. "The two main drivers here are risk aversion by investors everywhere in the face of what look to be very weak equity markets. But also there seems to be a lack of liquidity in markets which is amplifying the moves we're seeing in all currencies."

The loonie's second-largest monthly drop was 6.2 percent in November 1976, after Quebec, the country's second-most populous province, elected the separatist Parti Quebecois, "prompting markets to make a major reassessment of the Canadian dollar's prospects," wrote James Powell, author of a book on the history of the currency.

The drop this month is also larger than any annual decline since 1950. The currency fell 9.1 percent in 1992. This year, the loonie has depreciated by more than a fifth.

Low commodity prices, with a oil selling $US 62.65 a barrel, are blamed for this decline. The economy of Alberta in particular, until recently based on the exploitation of tar sand oils that would only be economic in a world of much higher prices, is going to take a nasty hit.