Foreign Perspectives

Interest rate changes by central banks are peculiar affairs.

For one thing, the banks aren’t actually obliged to respond by lowering interest rates although, usually, they do so by a similar amount. It’s usually a similar amount rather than exactly the same amount though which affects people differently: it’s common for banks to drop interest rates on savings accounts by a little more than the cut the central bank announces and loan rates by no more than is announced.

That sounds like they’re ripping you off, and to some extent they are, but what kicks in is the effect of their own administration on the processing of the loans and savings. Even if the central bank cut rates to zero, there would still be a charge for loans as that represents a risk to the bank, and savings rates would drop to zero or possibly a little below that as obviously there is a cost to processing savings too (they’d probably introduce charges rather than negative interest rates).

High interest products tend to represent higher risks so the rates on those aren’t always cut at all following a rate cut announcement.

And, of course, if you’ve a fixed rate loan then the payments on that will stay the same.

From my little shortlist of courses of a week or so back I ordered one each of the recommended text, most of which arrived this morning.

That’s already dropped off one of the potential courses, Art and its histories, and indeed courses in that particular line as I just don’t see me being able to stick at them long enough to finish a course in that area. The philosophy book looks quite interesting though it’s rather too information rich and will take a while to work through.

Which leaves the history book. That one looks surprisingly readable and I’ll be working my way through it over the coming weeks.

Although you’d think that there would be fewer Americans travelling abroad these days with the weak dollar, it seems to be the opposite that’s true. Not only are they travelling abroad more, but they’re considering purchasing property abroad too which is relatively unusual as well.

The dollar makes for a really serious price rise from the American perspective. Take the example of a property notionally priced at €800,000. Not so long ago that would have equated to around $1,000,000 but these days it’s a lot closer to $1,400,000 which is one serious price rise by any measure.

But even on the much smaller scale of vacation spending there’s quite a significant effect on costs if your income is in dollars. Typically this means that Americans on vacation in Europe need to downgrade the quality of accommodation that they use during their travels and we’ve noticed a significant shift towards the use of hostel reservation systems which wouldn’t normally generate much American business.

On the other side of the coin this, of course, means that property in America is pretty cheap for Europeans at the moment and it’s quite common to see American property promoted in European markets currently. If only I’d a few dollars to spare, I’d be quite tempted to buy a vacation rental property over there at the moment as the current strong euro/weak dollar isn’t what one would normally expect ie there’s going to be a swing back the other way in due course.

Just when you thought it was finally becoming affordable to get a video camera, they’ve gone and changed the goal posts.

At the moment the cheapest sensible camcorder is coming in around £140 but the cheapest sensible HD model is more like £430 ie getting on for three times the price. Is that extra cost worth it?

One of the main problems that going digital brings is that you just can’t get any more resolution out of the image than you had to begin with. That’s the same with normal film too, of course, but the difference is that normal film has a substantially higher resolution than any digital media you’d realistically be able to afford. The other problem is that display screens are constantly increasing in size. Thus the 13″ screen that was perfectly adequate some years ago has long since been replaced by a 20″ flat screen (equivalent to around 22″ on a non-flat model) and so we can see the limitations of images taken by older technologies.

Bearing in mind that you may well be looking at the images which you record now in, say, 20 years time then the HD devices probably are worth the extra money. You might not notice the difference on the display that you’re using today but chances are that you will notice the difference on the display that you’ll use to view them in even 5 years time.

Now, “all” you have to do is decide whether to go for a miniDV, SD, hard drive or DVD based machine.

That’s actually an easier decision in some ways. The SD card machines are much smaller so if it’s tiny that you want, then that’s the way to go. However, the only technology that doesn’t compress the image is miniDV. Yes, it’s using old-style tapes but if you want the best quality images it’s the one to choose; size-size the machines are about the same as the hard drive and DVD based models.

All being well, by Christmas I’ll have BA Hons Modern Languages after my name.

I’m hoping to do some more courses after that but will be taking it relatively easy in the coming year. For one thing, I want to leave a gap for my hoped for graduation in Versailles next September.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ll be doing nothing in the way of courses in the coming year. Skimming through potential courses that I might consider are Exploring Science, Art and its Histories, Astronomy and its companion Planetary Sciences, Exploring history from medieval to modern, Philosophy and the human situation and, finally, Child Development. Something of a mixed bag but all interesting courses.

The Child Development course is on my to-do list but seems relatively hard going so that knocks it out for the coming year. The Astronomy course has a residential falling in September so that’s also out for now. To see what I might be letting myself in for I’ve ordered the recommended texts for the art, history and philosophy courses before making a decision about them but at the moment the front runners seem to be Exploring Science and Planetary Sciences with the latter being the most likely option I suspect.