“Head for the Alps, either France or Austria to ski this winter,” jokes Sebastien Galy, senior currency strategist at Societe Generale. “It’s going to be significantly cheaper than the U.S. slopes.”
To put it another way, a Big Mac currently costs $4.79 on average in the United States. In Europe, a Big Mac goes for about $4.26, according to the latest calculation from The Economist.
What’s making Europe cheap? Europe’s economy is going through a bumpy patch. While the U.S. economy continues to rebound, Europe’s is teetering on another recession. The prices of goods in many parts of Europe are actually falling, a phenomenon called deflation, which one hedge fund manager recently compared to Darth Vader.
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