Former Fed chair (and "maestro") Alan Greenspan has a famous line where he says something like "if you think you understood what I said, you misheard." The idea of this "Fedspeak" was that it allowed the Fed to surprise the market now and again and actually achieve things in the monetary policy sphere.
Following Bernanke, Yellen, and J-Pow, the ruling paradigm has been the opposite: Open Mouth Operations (as opposed to "open market operations"), with as much transparency as possible, Fed speaking as clearly and unequivocally as it possibly can.
...and, of course it doesn't work. Fedwatchers and experts still read the central banking tea leaves, trying to discipher the hidden meaning behind this or that phrase.
It's so bad, indeed, that the public seems to misinterpret Fed information along partisan lines—shocker, I know.
Democrats thought US inflation was moderate in 2024 but expect it to be high in 2025; Republicans think the opposite. As such the results are rather like the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index, below, which shows consumer confidence is governed more by who is running the country than economic events.
Poor J-Pow must be really scratching his head in frustration (#758714):
What is J-Pow even to do?!
however hard Fed chair Jay Powell tries to say absolutely nothing controversial in a polarised US, people often hear news mediated through a partisan outlet and take offence, assuming he is speaking for the other side.
This is even funnier: In general, a majority of people think the Fed is partisan for the other side:
Some 66 per cent of people identifying as Democrats thought the Fed was run by a bunch of Trump-loving Republicans and 60 per cent of Republicans thought the Fed was a hotbed of woke Democrat lefties.
At least they the man on the street got this right:
"In total, almost two-thirds of respondents thought the Fed was essentially out to get them."
non-paywalled here: https://archive.md/dMkqN