Nice intro paragraph from Wall Street Journal's "Ahead of the Tape" column

The good news for Federal Reserve policy makers is that the risks to the economy are balanced. The bad news is that the weight keeps getting heavier on both sides of the scale.

The two sentences above are the simple, effective sentences that open Justin Lahart's "Ahead of the Tape" column in the May 9 Wall Street Journal. They get across the idea of stagflation without using technical terms. In fact, Word software says this sentence is written at a level below a seventh grade education.

When I addressed the CFA Society of Washington, D.C. last week, an audience member asked me, "Won't our clients be offended if we write at a lower grade level?" What do you think? When you skimmed the Wall Street Journal this morning, were you offended by Lahart's writing?