Try Not to Think About White Bears (and Inflation)

Inflation Expectations Matter, and Could Become Self-Fulfilling

Stephen Foerster
11 min readDec 21, 2021

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picture of a polar bear
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Polar_Bear_-_Alaska_(cropped).jpg

This is a story about trying not to think about white bears — can you do that? Give it a try. “I’m not going to think about white bears…” Ooops, did you just think about white bears?! Let’s try this again: “I’m not going to think about…” Wow, every time you try to not think…

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Stephen Foerster

I’m a Finance prof, CFA, and author of In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio (with Andrew Lo). I write stories about investing. (I don’t give financial advice.)