Mixed signals

When the Bank of Japan let banks have as much money as they wanted, the goal was to push retail prices up. The European Central Bank did a bit of quantitative easing on Thursday and Friday, allowing banks to snap up E150bn at the target 4% overnight interest rate. But the ECB, along with most of the world’s central banks, wants to keep inflation down. It’s a challenge. True, inflation rates have fallen recently. But unemployment is low, growth is good and imported goods from Asia are getting mo...