Tim Duy: The Fed Lacks a Coherent Communications Strategy

Tim Duy of Fed Watch complains that Fed communications are undisciplined and often send confusing messages when circumstances (like now) require clarity and confidence.

Running the Fed Like an Economics Department

"It seems to me that the Fed lacks a coherent communication strategy – there is no willingness on the part of the leadership to enforce talking points. As a consequence, there is enormous pointless chatter from Fed officials that might be interesting in some sense, but provide misleading guidance about policy direction. Recent talk about scaling back the size of the large scale asset program, for instance. Almost certainly not going to happen – so why talk about it? Sadly, it appears to be an almost deliberate effort to create uncertainty among market participants at a time when the opposite is so important."