The Fed's communication toolkit is broken and everyone knows it.

Forward guidance used to be a useful innovation when rates hit zero. Now it's just noise. The dot plot? A quarterly theater where 19 people pencil in guesses about rate paths 2-3 years out — guesses that get revised or abandoned within months.

Markets overreact to dots. Media overinterprets them. And the Fed ends up hostage to its own projections, boxed in by dots that were always conditional but get treated as commitments.

The fix isn't complicated: other major central banks manage just fine without this level of forward hand-holding. The ECB, Bank of England, Bank of Japan — none of them publish individual rate forecasts. They communicate policy stance, data dependence, and flexibility. That's it.

In the meantime, one elegant interim solution: make the dot plot optional. Let FOMC members choose whether to submit dots or not. My guess? Within a year or two, participation drops off and the whole exercise quietly fades into irrelevance through revealed preference.

Central banking works best when it's clear, humble, and flexible. Right now the Fed's communication does the opposite — it overcommits, underdelivers, and confuses more than it clarifies.

Time to simplify.