So I’ve been in a news blackout this weekend and it was lovely.

Into the Central North Island I went. I biked all around Taupo for a look on Saturday and then up Mt Ruapehu on Sunday. The mountain that was closed because it was full by 8.15am each day. It really is booming. Perhaps a bit too much.

My impression of the whole region was one of activity and excitement. No vacancy signs all over Taupo. People skydiving. The roar of engines from the Motorsport Park. The streets buzzing with languages and accents from around the world. She was all go That might also be because the weather was simply superb. I’ve never seen the water of Lake Taupo smoother. It was jaw-droppingly beautiful.

But the upshot was that I was completely deaf to any news. So deaf that even though I was in the town that developed a sinkhole in it I didn’t know.

So this morning I finally turned on the radio to find out what was going on in the world. And the lead story was the New Zealand dollar going lower

For many, this is a bad sign even though it was completely predictable when Adrian Orr said that interest rates weren’t going up any time before 2020. On the other side, the US Fed has increased interest rates seven times in the past three years and is likely to do it two more times before Christmas. That means the US base rate is higher than ours for the first time in two decades.

So any money invested was always going to flow out in search of higher interest rates.

But let’s always remember that these things are relative. While you can say look how well the US is doing you could also say look how badly they’ve been doing for decades. Remember they got so bad that had effectively zero interest rates and they printed money.

Our dollar is now at 66 cents versus the greenback. 12 per cent lower than a year ago. In 2000 it was 39 cents.

Now while the petrol prices and imported goods are going to get more expensive you have to look at the bright side that we have in relative terms.

Yes, America is firing, but our predicted growth rate for the next three years is still better than Europe, Japan and the UK.

Our low-interest rates mean low mortgages, but more importantly, any business doing well can find cheap capital.

The businesses doing well will be those trading overseas who will be getting 12 per cent more than a year ago. And that’s exporters, agriculture and of course tourism. We’ve become 12 per cent cheaper than last year and 25 per cent cheaper than we were in 2014. No wonder Taupo was rocking this weekend with foreign accents.

And there’s more money available for investing in these businesses as private equity investors pull out of fixed terms.

The business confidence figures and a low dollar worry some. But for me, I see this as a cup of tea for six months and the upshot is that we will be well placed to get our second wind.