Final Word from Monday, April 8, 2019

When it comes to monetary policy, Donald Trump wants to have his cake and eat it too. On the one hand, he's nominating two gold bugs to the Federal Reserve, which gives the president the street cred of someone who wants to get the nasty central bankers under control. Yet on the other hand, he's calling for the Fed to cut interest rates and to relaunch quantitative easing. Inflating the Fed's balance sheet by another trillion dollars is the antithesis of what a real gold bug believes in. The CNB is coming at it from a different angle, but the effect is similar. It's taking credit for tightening monetary policy and improving macroeconomic conditions, but it's doing it without reversing the huge printing of new crowns that it launched on Nov. 7, 2013. And now the CNB is prepared to relax mortgage lending rules for young people. Nobody wants to get the blame when the house of cards comes tumbling down, so both Trump and the CNB are doing what they must to keep it standing. [ Czech Republic Czech National Bank President United States of America ]