SA Rand drop to 13 Year Low - http://www.iol.co.za/business/markets/currencies/sa-s-rand-is-on-the-ropes-1.1828922#.VP1M5Xv9kqM

[SurferMan]

Geez I feel for those on pensions or investing. Constant erosion of value. It's fixable but the policy makers just can't dare as they will lose votes.

Grr, can't post the link, SAA never works on IE. Only Mozilla, sorry guys it's on iol.co.za

[awbotha500]

Dis bad, with this rand. The rands is now very african money, have you seen the new notes, it has picture of a terrorist on it.

[SurferMan]

Lol, No I have not seen them Aw, been out of SA for nearly 5 years. Won' touch SAI money with a barge pole. Still waiting for SARS to try and klap me with my last bill, been nearly 3 years. Lucky for me I have an email from their top brass to cover me.

My main concern though is the erosion of value, granted all currencies are subject to this, but people who slaved their lives now face poverty or worse. I count my poor father who lost everything in a deal gone wrong. He lives on a government pension.

[Bob]

The Rand may be dropping to new lows against a basket of currencies (US dollar, Euro, Sterling, Swiss Franc, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, and so on), but the Australian dollar has also fallen in recent times.

With this in mind, it would seem wise to check that the rate of Rands to the Aussie dollar has actually fallen to new lows, as well.

A year ago, the rate was about 9.5 Rands for one Aussie $, even reaching 10 Rand for one Aussie $ at one point.

The Aussie $ has fallen over the past few months, more so than the Rand.

Now it takes about 8.8 Rands to get one Aussie $.

. . . . . looks to me like a pretty good time to convert to Australian dollars, before the Aussie gains strength again and leaves the Rand far behind (12 or 15 Rand to one Aussie $)

[elleneo]

Fin24 has the rand at 9,32 an aussie dollar, I watched the rand drop by 40c to the aus dollar over the last 2 weeks, this is even with the aus dollar losing strength.

Moral of the story? The rand is dropping value faster than the Aus dollar. Period.

[Nev]

The 10 year average for the AUD / USD is 0.77 I have heard a few places say that now that the resource boom is over it is correcting to its historical average

A positive spin off will be that it will improve the cost of our manufactured items internationally and should help create non mining work in the country, offshoring will get a bit more expensive as well, so in all a bit of good news for the economy.

International purchases will get more expensive which can have an effect on inflation, this will also make locally produced cheaper and keep more money in the country so still some good news there

Basically this correction to the 10 year average is really healthy for Australia as it gets over its mining resource addiction.

Edited March 9, 2015 by Nev

[elleneo]

9,40 this morning,so dropped by 8c in 24 hours!