Make the Fed’s Latest Dot Plot the Last

The Federal Reserve’s policy makers left interest rates unchanged at their meeting this week, and the central bank’s new policy statement affirmed the “wait-and-see” approach unveiled by Chairman Jerome Powell in January. That didn’t stop many analysts greeting this uneventful announcement as significant. The reason was the Fed’s famous and increasingly confusing dot plot.

Fed officials are right to be asking whether the dot plot has outlived its usefulness. Indeed it has — and it should be dropped. Under current circumstances, it is confounding, not helping the Fed’s efforts to explain itself to investors.