One of the most popular holidays of the entire year, especially for lovers of all things flowery, is Valentine’s Day. February 14th is the biggest day for purchasing flowers, chocolates, and cards each year. I found a particularly interesting article concerning the floral business.

That’s pretty much business as usual for one of the busiest days on the floral calendar, along with many other aspects of their businesses this year. Sure some customers are buying differently this year thanks in large part to the economy, but they’re still buying.

Apparently the flowers tend to skew less expensive in an economy such as this one, but this is to be expected. Later on the article one of the floral shop owners comments that they expect less roses ordered, and more spring-oriented flowers. This makes a great deal of sense–as the economy has gone down, so has the ability to purchase luxury items like floral arrangements.

For a number of years the dollar has been in decline, but that has never been more obvious than it was today when it was announced that the dollar had hit a 14-year low against China’s Yen. This came on a day when the Nikkei, one of Japan’s stock market compilations–similar to Dow Jones, continued to decline. Canon, Toyota, and Asahi Glass Co. all plummeted Thursday, each of them has a direct effect on the United States because of their shares of their respective markets. Apparently some of the reason for the Nikkei’s declining value is the fear that Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will fail to right the ship of the economy.

However, the lessons that Americans should take from this news is that the dollar is not as strong as we are often told.

The dollar depreciated to as low as 86.30 against the yen today, a level not seen since July 1995. A weaker dollar reduces the value of overseas sales at Japanese companies when converted into their home currency.

Read more here.