So says Jeffrey Snider, here:
Chairman Bernanke stole the show yesterday, certainly by his accommodative and now contradictory stand. I suppose that is the danger in trying to talk “markets” toward “targets”, much like Greenspan in the late 1990’s. Toward that end, he made at least one prediction that will likely come true (in sharp contrast to the Fed’s history), namely that the unemployment rate understates the weakness in the jobs market. ... As to the potential for tapering, that has always been about the rock and the hard place; the rock being asset bubbles in housing, credit and, yes, stocks vs. the hard place of lackluster, at best, economic performance. Given the problems of real time economic tracking and the dubious record of ferbus and other econometric models in use it would make sense that the FOMC appears to subscribe to each and every possible outcome concurrently. The committee both backs the accommodative approach (employment might be weaker than indicated) and the taper approach (things are getting much better) all at the same time.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Still, it's an odd way to behave if you are being shown the door in a few months.
