The Chinese 'devalue,' but not the Czechs

Central bankers are a breed apart, regardless of whether they're in New York, Frankfurt, Beijing or Prague. True to form, the People's Bank of China didn't call this week's depreciation of the yuan/renminbi a "devaluation." It initially attributed the depreciation (in English) to a decision to "improve the quotation of the central parity". A day later it finally acknowledged that the currency had been "depreciated," but never did it use the word "devaluation." This didn't fool even the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, which nearly immediately referred to it as a "devaluation." So did the foreign and Czech press. True to form, the Czech National Bank still refers to its own devaluation of 7% on Nov. 7, 2013, (which is now more like 11% on an implied basis), as a decision to "use the exchange rate as an additional instrument for easing the monetary conditions." And most Czech journalists and analysts are happy to play along with the ruse.