The political economy would be hopelessly

Bernanke employs an elementary tactic in rhetorical obfuscation; i.e., presenting a problem without explaining the cause but going immediately into the prescription to be taken to counter its deleterious effects.

This tactic is helpful because it exonerates the FED from being implicated in the cause and, therefore, clears the way for the chairman of the FED to prescribe without excuses.

Picture if you will a doctor, Ben, who has been called into a case. The patient is suffering from severe bodily malfunctioning. Without disclosing that he was the doctor who has been treating the patient with ever increasing doses of heroin, Ben prescribes an even larger dose of heroin. Thus, as the patient’s condition continues to deteriorate, Ben explains that once the dosage of heroin is large enough, the patient would recover.

Alas, the patient dies; and Ben intones with regret—“Our treatment had the patient on the brink of recovery, if only his heart had been stronger!”

Chairman Bernanke also takes full advantage of the ambiguous nature of many words in the English language. For instance, words like significant, improvement, steady, growing, strengthening, positive, etc. imply betterment. But, without quantification, I could say my pulse rate has ‘improved,’ albeit only from 5 beats per minute to 6. Betterment yes, but, to imply significance would be misleading.

The chairman projects the assumption of government’s role as the ‘great intellectual in the sky’ without whose policy actions the political economy would be hopelessly lost in a malfunctioning black hole. Despite the evidence to the contrary.

Bernanke feels very comfortable projecting the role of pontificating High Priest in all matters economic; despite his being culpable for the malfunctioning economy all around him. His professorial tone tends to con his audience into nodding acquiescence.

All of these comments beg the questions:

As smart as he is, does he realize he is using illogical ‘rope-a-dope’ to hoodwink, is he a miscreant practicing intellectual chicanery, or is he just a loyal soldier in the army of political malfeasance?