MSNBC reports that last year, American tourism was down 40% versus a decade ago. Worse, the Paris tourism office says 2009 traffic was down another 3.4% versus the prior year.
Surprisingly, while we only read of a double-dip recession, French tourism officials expect that Americans will be coming back "as the the U.S. economy improves. I have no doubt they are correct, but I don't thing that will mean in 2011.
That marks opening day of this year’s winter “soldes” (sales), five weeks of frenzied bargain-hunting for the perfect Azzaro cocktail dress or the normally unaffordable monogrammed Noël bed linen — at between 30 and 70 percent off.
...Sales occur in Paris, of course, year around, but under French law, retail stores can only run public sales with big "SOLDES" banners only for several weeks in January and July.
...With charm and some good luck, you may be able to persuade the sales person to extend you the discount on the eve of the sales, or at least to set the longed-for item aside.
Oil is down in the $70s risking to lull us again into energy complacency, and now the dollar is rising against the Euro. ... While Europeans have jumped in to address their financial markets issues more aggressively than the US, they have no central authority to target shoot the trouble areas. And any one country not stabilizing its own banks runs the risk of unwittingly being the weak link for the Euro as a whole.
