Fruitless

Another glorious example of the tyranny of unregulated
exchange rates, the kind New Zealand has, the kind that
make a mockery of what ought to be the straightforward,
fair and honest business of making money out of what a
nation produces and sells to other nations. I quote Rick
Curtis, speaking for the citrus growers of New Zealand,
who said on Radio New Zealand the other day that it’s
getting harder to sell fruit like lemons and mandarins on
overseas markets because competition is getting tougher
and, guess what, fluctuations in the exchange rate of the
New Zealand dollar—that bauble—make it virtually
impossible to judge how profitable a market will be. ‘It’s
like playing Russian roulette,' said Curtis. 'except you've
got no gun and no bullets.' Actually, now that I look at it,
the extended simile doesn't really make sense; but we
know what he means. 'You have,' he added, 'absolutely
no control.' Thus do we penalize and handicap our
exporters while rewarding faceless currency speculators
sitting in front of screens in foreign cities.