We examine the international impact of the information content in US monetary policy. When the Federal Reserve tightens monetary policy, it reveals not only a tightened monetary stance, but also optimism about the economy, raising global output and asset prices as a result. Using a panel dataset of fifty-eight countries over the period 1994–2020, we disentangle “information shocks” from pure monetary shocks and show that (i) while tightening shocks are contractionary for the global economy, the information inherent in a tightening announcement can have expansionary effects; (ii) monetary and information shocks tend to offset each other, softening the net spillovers to the world economy; and (iii) the information inherent in monetary easing lowers output and asset prices. US monetary announcements can thus reveal optimism or pessimism with consequences for global economic activity.