The article argues that Kevin Warsh’s 114-word June FOMC statement marks a deliberate break from the post-2008 era of expansive Fed communication. Using Sims’s rational inattention framework, it explains why longer statements never meaningfully reached ordinary households. Most people process Fed communication through a narrow channel, reducing complex guidance to a basic directional signal about rates, inflation or mortgage costs.

The effects of shorter communication are therefore asymmetric. For households, little changes because the removed detail was never absorbed. For markets and professional Fed-watchers, the withdrawal matters because high-capacity audiences scrutinize every word, shifting attention to press conferences, minutes and speeches. The article extends the logic to news feeds, arguing that falling engagement reflects rational bandwidth management in a noisy policy environment. Shorter is not dumber, but simplicity must not become silence.