Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England from 1920 to 1944, was said to operate by the maxim “never explain, never excuse”. In 1981 Karl Brunner, a Swiss economist, described central banking as thriving on the impression that it was “an esoteric art”. Alan Greenspan, the late former chairman of the Federal Reserve, perfected this art with “Fedspeak”. He had learned, he said, to “mumble with great incoherence”. Kevin Warsh is trying to restore a little Delphic mystery to the Fed. After his second press conference in late July commentators described his words as “confusing”, “internally contradictory” and “nonsense”. The words are also sparser. Under Mr Warsh, policy statements have shrunk from roughly 340 words to half that or less. “Forward guidance”—language indicating where policy may be headed—has been stripped out. In June he declined to submit his own interest-rate projection and said his colleagues’ forecasts had been written in pencil with “big erasers”. He is also considering fewer policy meetings and press conferences. Yet Mr Warsh’s tight lips are less radical than they look. Until 1994 the Fed did not even announce its rate decisions; surprise was thought to make policy more effective. Then came a communications revolution. The Fed began to publish its policy “bias”—the likeliest direction of its next decision —in 1999, and to signal the future path of rates in 2003. Michael Woodford of Columbia University provided the theoretical rationale: spending in the economy depends less on today’s overnight interest rate than on the rates people expect in the future. “Not only do expectations about policy matter,” he wrote, “but…very little else matters.” In the mid-2000s Mervyn King, then governor of the Bank of England (and now co-head of Mr Warsh’s new task-force on the Fed’s comms strategy), called this the “Maradona theory” of interest rates. During his famous run against England, the Argentine footballer moved almost in a straight line while defenders veered aside, expecting him to turn. Central banks could do the same. In 2002 the Bank of England did not change its policy rate, yet expectations of future rates shifted with the economic outlook and helped stabilise spending. The monetary-policy framework was “doing the work for us”, said Lord King.
After the global financial crisis of 2007-09 central banks went further. With policy rates already near zero, they emphasised that they expected rates to stay low even after the economy began to recover. In 2011 the Fed suggested it would keep rates near zero until at least mid-2013; the next year it began publishing officials’ rate projections as dots. Although it was still Delphically non-committal, markets heard this as an Odysseus-like pledge by the central bankers to bind themselves to lower rates for longer. Whether any central bank would truly tie itself to the mast is doubtful; but the theory, as told by Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel prize in 2008, was to “credibly promise to be irresponsible”. More explicit central-bank language made markets hypersensitive to any change in wording. It also boxed in policymakers. In 2013 Mark Carney, Lord King’s successor at the Bank of England, said that higher rates would not be considered until unemployment fell at least to 7%. The threshold was crossed far sooner than expected, forcing Mr Carney to clarify his guidance. Since prediction is hard, especially about the future, central bankers strive to explain how they would respond to events without prejudging what events will occur. The Bank of England has long wrapped its forecasts in error bars; in April it replaced a single central forecast with three scenarios. Yet when the scenarios repeatedly miss, the elaborate display of uncertainty can start to erode credibility, not protect it. The Fed overcommunicated in a different way in 2020 and 2021. It called inflation “transitory” and promised not to raise rates until employment had fully recovered and inflation exceeded 2% “for some time”. The guidance anchored market expectations—but tied the Fed to an outlook that was fast becoming obsolete. Rates stayed too low for too long. Mr Warsh’s instinct to say less is understandable in light of such failures. It starts from humility. The Fed is not all-knowing and the price-discovering financial markets are, in his words, a “very accomplished economist”. But prices, in this case, are not signals from the gods. They reflect guesses about what the Fed will do—plus, for now, a risk premium on Mr Warsh’s untested stewardship. And humble speech is not enough to impress markets. Above all, the speaker needs to be trusted. In the 1990s investors believed Robert Rubin when as
treasury secretary he stated that “A strong dollar is in our national interest.” In 2012 they grasped that the European Central Bank under Mario Draghi really would do “whatever it takes” to save the euro. It was Messrs Rubin’s and Draghi’s hard-won credibility that made these oracular economic speech acts, conveying resolve without specifying the means, so powerful. By stressing how little the Fed understands, Mr Warsh may be making himself —and the Fed—less credible. For an oracle, it is not enough to know thyself.■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/08/06/how-and-how-much-should- central-banks-talk
How a bipartisan coalition is taking aim at animal research Should AI labs be treated like the owners of dangerous animals? How poor countries are dealing with America’s AIDS cuts How to stop procrastinating
Science & technology | Of mice and politics How a bipartisan coalition is taking aim at animal research America’s animal-rights activists have more sway than ever Aug 6th 2026 AROUND 5,000 monkeys call the suburban sprawl west of Portland, Oregon home. Behind a row of houses, at the end of a long road with a security checkpoint, lies the Oregon National Primate Research Centre (ONPRC). With its tall firs and grand sequoias the lab can feel like a retreat in the woods. For nearly a decade Brandon Wilder, an immunologist, has used the monkeys to study malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that kills more than half a million people each year. “It’s not easy, and no one enjoys seeing an animal in a cage,” acknowledges Dr Wilder. But he believes the human stakes warrant it. Earlier this year, some of Dr Wilder’s work on how the immune system responds to malaria
was accepted for publication in Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals. He hopes the discovery could help with the development of a universal vaccine against the disease, a goal that has long eluded scientists. Besides malaria, his colleagues study HIV, dementia and infertility. These days, though, such work has become a battleground in a growing campaign against conducting scientific research on animals. Robert F. Kennedy junior, America’s health secretary, has vowed to end animal experimentation and claimed that the country’s seven federally funded primate-research centres, of which ONPRC is the largest, “have a profit motive”. In February the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a federal funding agency that awards the ONPRC around $50m a year, proposed converting the lab into an animal sanctuary instead. By July that plan was deemed too expensive and abandoned. Instead Oregon Health and Science University, which oversees the centre, announced it would gradually shift research away from primates. The campaign to end research on animals has forged one of the most eclectic coalitions in American politics. Mainstream Democrats, progressives, right- wing populists, libertarians and the MAGA movement all find themselves working towards the same aim. And they are already making progress. Animals are used across the biomedical pipeline, from fundamental research on diseases to testing the safety of new drugs before human trials begin. Most of the work is done on mice and rats. Monkeys are estimated to make up less than one per cent of the total number of animals used in America. But the evolutionary closeness to humans that makes monkeys valuable as test subjects also makes the prospect of experimenting on them particularly abhorrent to many. For decades opposition to animal testing was concentrated in the political left. But no longer. A central figure in the growing right-wing opposition is Anthony Bellotti, a long-time Republican operative. His organisation, White Coat Waste, casts animal research as fiscal profligacy, and ties it to issues that already animate conservatives. In Donald Trump’s first term Mr Bellotti produced campaigns alleging that reckless experiments on animals were
responsible for the covid-19 pandemic, citing work at a lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city in which the pandemic began. By the time Mr Trump returned to office in January 2025 White Coat Waste had spent four years cultivating Republican allies and drawing up lists of labs to target. “I don’t care about the science,” Mr Bellotti says defiantly. “I’m the guy who cuts the money.” In April of last year Justin Goodman, Mr Bellotti’s second-in-command, met Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the NIH. Mr Goodman told The Economist that Dr Bhattacharya said he was a “big fan” of White Coat Waste and pledged to work to end all research on “cats, dogs and primates”. (The NIH did not respond to The Economist’s request for comment.) One of Mr Bellotti’s most powerful surrogates has been Laura Loomer, a right-wing activist who is highly influential in Trumpworld. Scientists who conduct animal experiments are “abusers…on par with serial killers”, she says. She recalls that when she described the alleged details of some experiments to Mr Trump he was revulsed, calling them “sick” and “disgusting”. Ms Loomer has also lobbied Mr Kennedy and Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary. Both have chipped away at animal research in their agencies. Democrats have generally opposed Mr Trump’s wider cuts to science funding. Animal research, however, seems to be an exception. In November the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a public-health agency, announced that it would shut a primate lab that is mainly used for HIV research. There was no outcry from Democrats. In Oregon Dr Wilder laments that some of the fiercest pressure on the centre has come from Democrats. The state’s progressive governor, Tina Kotek, has urged its closure. For some the case for moving away from animal research rests on the idea that new technology can replace it. Collectively known as New Approach Methods (NAMs), such technologies include organs-on-a-chip; organoids, which are 3D replicas of human tissue; and AI models. Cory Booker, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, told The Economist that though he is “not an ideologue on this issue”, he considers “the vast majority” of animal