Final Word from Thursday, March 5, 2020

The CNB's board members should have been put in quarantine years ago, but they're still roaming the markets and spreading the highly contagious revaluation virus. Bankers who catch it have hallucinations of grandeur and suffer from obsessive-compulsive interest-rate-increase disorder. Among those with the most serious rate-differential urge is Marek Mora, one of the four CNB bankers who voted during the coronavirus outbreak for a feverishly high benchmark rate of 2.25%. He was also the only Czech central banker to comment so far on the impact of the coronavirus. While Fed Chair Jay Powell was cutting rates because he and his colleagues "saw a risk to the outlook for the economy and chose to act," Mora was telling LN that he wouldn't vote now for a rate increase if factory closings and product shortages led to higher prices. You read that right. His default position is still higher interest rates. Would someone please send a hazmat team to Příkopy 28? [ Czech Republic Lidové noviny Jerome Federal Reserve ]