Gisele Bundchen abandons the dollar. Who’s next?

By wpcomimportuser1 | November 6, 2007 | +

Lots of people have been wondering when one of the big oil-exporting countries, fed up with the weakening dollar, will demand to be paid in euros. But few had been paying attention to the far greater threat that supermodels might demand payment in currency harder than the greenback. Until now:

According to Brazil’s weekly magazine Veja, when Ms Bündchen signed a deal to represent Pantene hair products, she demanded that the brand owner, Procter & Gamble (P&G), paid her in euros.
[Snip]

There are also reports that she will be paid in euros for a deal with Dolce & Gabanna to promote its The One fragrance.

My take: There are good reasons the dollar should lose ground over time against the rupee and the yuan and the riyal. But this whole dollar/euro thing is just cyclical–although that doesn’t mean the cycle is going to to turn anytime soon.

Related Topics: Economy & Policy

@TIMEBusiness

Latest on Business

Apple May 25, 2012

Apple CEO Cook Gives Up $75M in Stock Dividends

NEW YORK — Apple CEO Tim Cook is giving up $75 million in dividends on restricted stock that the company is awarding to all of its employees.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, Apple Inc. said that Cook requested that his restricted stock units not receive dividends. The dividends that Apple workers are getting amount to $2.65 per quarter for each restricted stock unit held. The shares are not normally eligible to receive dividends, so Apple’s decision is a perk for its employees.
From our Partners
The Bomb Hidden in Mitt Romney's Education PlanSlate

The Richest Woman in the World: How Gina Rinehart Earns her BillionsDaily Finance
Why Dell Will Never Be Great AgainHuff Post Business
Economy May 25, 2012

Study: Typical CEO Pay Up 6% to $9.6 Million

NEW YORK — Profits at big U.S. companies broke records last year, and so did pay for CEOs.

The head of a typical public company made $9.6 million in 2011, according to an analysis by The Associated Press using data from Equilar, an executive pay research firm.

http://www.currencyexchange.com Yadgyu

I wonder: How hard are Euros to counterfeit?
http://fundmasteryblog.com Kurt Brouwer

I agree with you Justin. The dollar’s weakness against the Euro is cyclical. In 2001, you could have bought a Euro for 84 cents. Today, the same Euro costs $1.45 or so. The key difference in the dollar’s strength is interest rates. When the Federal Reserve raises rates, the dollar strengthen. After 2001, the Fed cut rates and the dollar fell. It stabilized in 2004 when the Fed raised rates and began to fall again recently when the Fed began dropping rates again.
frizzy mama

Well, my takeaway from this is somewhat different: within the small excerpt you posted, the BBC made both a grammatical error (“she demanded that the brand owner…paid her in euros”) and a spelling error (“Gabanna” instead of “Gabbana”).

The Beeb is over.
p_lukasiak

it may well be cyclical, but its not economic cycles that investors are looking at, but political ones.

After the Fed’s drop in interest rates last week, its glaringly obvious that Bernanke is simply a partisan hack who will use the Fed to advance GOP prospects in the 2008 elections.

Bernanke will continue to drop rates at the slightest hint of a recession occuring before next November in much the same way that Greenspan dropped rates in a desperate futile attempt to prevent a recession for Bush in 2001.

With a hack like Bernanke running the Fed, its obvious that no effort to strengthen the dollar is happening anytime soon — and that after the election, the US will doubtless descend into a recessionary economy.
http://atbozzo.blogspot.com Ken Houghton

Paul’s description is pictureseque, but not off target. Combine the “Accounting Identity” trumpeted by Martin Feldstein in his description of late-Reagan-Era currency depreciation and the trend in relative growth rates between the EU and EE.UU. and 1986-88 Redux should not be a surprise.