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HONEST ECONOMICS Mardoqueo Arteaga HONEST ECONOMICS Mardoqueo Arteaga

The Fed's Communication Channel is a Broken Functor

The article argues that the Federal Reserve’s biggest problem today is not inflation itself but the failure of its communication to reach ordinary households. While actual inflation has fallen to around 2.7%, many Americans still expect much higher inflation and feel pessimistic about the economy, leading them to behave as if inflation is still a crisis. Using an analogy from category theory, Mardoqueo explains that the Fed’s intended communication chain, from Fed announcements to financial markets to household expectations, no longer works for most people because households pay more attention to everyday prices like groceries than to markets or Fed statements. As a result, inflation expectations remain unanchored, weakening the Fed’s credibility at a sensitive political moment. Until the Fed finds a way to fix or adapt to this broken communication channel, the gap between economic reality and public perception is likely to persist.

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HONEST ECONOMICS Kent Bhupathi HONEST ECONOMICS Kent Bhupathi

Stop Doomscrolling, and Start Stress-Testing: How Geopolitics Hits the Economy and Your Wallet

On Saturday, my phone didn’t just buzz… it practically tried to achieve orbit!

I had actually managed to fall asleep like a responsible adult who swears they’re “cutting back on news,” and then woke up to an avalanche of alerts about a major geopolitical rupture in Venezuela. You know, the kind of headlines that makes you blink twice and think, “oh, geeze… not again! Not another one!” Somewhere in my brain, the Chris Farley meme was already putting on its awful, brown tie and reporting for duty: “Getting pretty tired of living through historical events.”

That joke may be doing an irresponsible amount of emotional labor right now. And for that, I apologize.

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