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Dollar Staggers out of Ditch for Brief Day in the Sun
For the last 14 months in Peru, the value of the U.S. dollar has been tanking. That trend really hurts when you’re an expat, like me, who still keeps a bank account in the U.S. When El Fotógrafo and I arrived in Lima in July 2007, the dollar was trading at 3.3 Peruvian soles. We didn’t realize at the time, but that was a sweet exchange rate. A few months later, the dollar started dipping in value. We were shocked when it went under 3 soles. Then it began dropping more, all the way to 2.65 soles. The official money changers (see guy in green vest, above) we traded with…
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Escaping the American Credit Nightmare
Note to readers: My opinion piece “Escaping the American Credit Nightmare” appears in the Sunday (Oct. 12, 2008) edition of the Miami Herald, in the “My View” column of the business section. Here’s my original piece below — Barbara Drake: One of the pleasures of moving to Peru last July (2007) was escaping the flurry of credit offers that used to besiege our mailbox in Florida. Each afternoon I’d grab the stack of new mail and spend a good 15 minutes going through the envelopes. There’d be offers for new credit cards, lines of credit, adjustable-rate mortgages on our home, home-equity lines of credit, cash-out refinances. I had never asked for…
