Year Seven of the Great Devaluation

On the sixth anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution on Nov. 7, 1923, Leon Trotsky wrote in Pravda that the "seventh year since our revolution opens amid grim foreboding." In the Bible, he said, the world was created in six days, and the seventh was a day of rest. "After six years of bloodshed and superhuman effort to build a new world, the seventh lies before us," he said, "yet it will not be a year of rest, but rather one of great struggle ... and inestimable sacrifice on the road to victory." As Year Seven of the Great Devaluation of the Czech Crown begins, Czechs are enjoying what looks on paper like six years of economic wonder. Everything that could increase, has. Yet the manna that made this miracle possible, the trillions of crowns in newly printed money, is still floating around in the system. Uncertainty about whether the CNB will add to this cache in the coming year of struggle and sacrifice, or instead withdraw from it, is cause for grim foreboding.