Financial crisis of infinite Earths

Dammit dammit dammit.

I'm fairly clueless about the economy, but I'm even more clueless about exchange rates. Today the Australian dollar dropped to about 72 US cents, and it looks like it may drop even more. Apparently this has to do with Australia and commodities or something like that. All I know is that it's not looking good for my two trips.

In the red corner (ok, they're not really competing with each other, so it's a terrible analogy, but I digress): USA trip for the LISA conference. I wanted to buy some things that would be cheaper to buy in the USA. While it may still be cheaper now (and when I get there), I kind of regret not ordering a few weeks ago when the dollar was a bit more reasonable. Could have saved a good 50-100 dollars (depending on how many things I end up getting). Oh well. The hard decision now is whether to cut my losses and order things now, or wait it out and hope the dollar improves closer to my travel date.

And in the blue corner: Japan. Should I have started booking hotels a lot earlier? Probably. Did I? No. Sapporo ended up being rather expensive, and now that the Aussie dollar is dropping, the others may end up hurting us more than we would have liked too.

The good news is that the USA trip is all booked, and flights to Japan were dirt cheap. I guess it could be worse.

(EDIT: And yes, I did make a mistake in that initial post. I said "less clueless". I should've said "more clueless". This is now corrected. The universe is safe once more.)