While most all of my colleagues value the state-contingent argument, at last week’s meeting the majority of this year’s voters felt that a combination of factors – including an expectation that “economic growth over coming quarters [will] be modest and … the unemployment rate will decline only gradually”; that the housing sector “remains depressed”; and that a “slowing in global growth” and other factors, combined with an anticipation “that over coming quarters, inflation will run at levels at or below those consistent with the Committee’s dual  4  “Q&A: German Finance Minister Takes On Critics,” by Marcus Walker, William Boston and Andreas Kissler, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 29, 2012. 5  See the FOMC’s /20120125a.htm. 4  statement,  Jan.  25,  2012,  www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary  BIS central bankers’ speeches  mandate” – warranted a need for the committee to indicate it would likely maintain a significantly accommodative monetary stance for another three years. Second, the statement was accompanied by a first-ever release of the individual economic and interest-rate forecasts of all the policy meeting’s 17 participants. Mind you, these are not binding commitments. They are based on the assumption of “appropriate monetary policy” and are, despite the best of intentions, largely guesswork, especially looking out over a multiyear period.
When collated responses are then presented raw, and weighted by confidence. 28 A particularly famous example of good and clear communication of a complicated message is Feynman Diagrams, which are pictorial representations of the behaviour of subatomic particles. 24  8  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  8  2. Good practices need to become more widespread in the media  Good standards and practices are important given the vital role the media plays in any democracy and in mediating the views of experts – and they exist in many places. But the economics of the industry has created a dangerous trend where the unwillingness to pay for content means that financial pressures squeeze out higher quality reporting. Many news organisations have to rely on “native advertising” (whereby a product is promoted under the guise of a news story) to generate income. Perhaps as a result, trust in mainstream media has plummeted more than any other institution and is now distrusted in more than 80% of countries. 29  This has been exacerbated by the rise of fake news and the phenomenon of “false equivalence”  whereby, in the name of balanced reporting, news organizations give equal time to credible and less credible sources. How can producers of information and expertise balance the need for reliability with allowing different views to be heard? What is the balance between freedom of speech and the media’s duty to 30  inform? Few institutions value freedom of speech more than universities.