Oh Maria

Is it too late to recall Greenspan?
From MSNBC:

Stocks fell on Monday after CNBC's Maria Bartiromo revealed on air that Ben Bernanke felt his testimony last week had been "misunderstood."

And I don't blame Maria, unless she has distorted what was said. Did she realize what her report would do to the markets? Doesn't matter; Mr Bernanke should have known.

"I asked him whether the markets got it right after his congressional testimony and he said, flatly, no," Ms Bartiromo said. She was reporting live from floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the resulting trading roar almost drowned out the rest of her remarks.

I recommend he wires his jaws shut before going out in public.

The S&P 500 fell 0.7 per cent and the Nasdaq Composite lost almost 0.9 per cent. Stocks had rallied on Mr Bernanke's testimony last week, which was interpreted as signalling a probable pause in the Fed's series of rate rises after its May meeting.

"It comes off as a great example of over-communication and a possible attempt to over-fine-tune, assuming he was willing to go on the record with these comments - CNBC is not the Fed's obvious port of call to correct market expectations," said Alan Ruskin, strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital.

The Fed declined to comment.

"The Fed declined to comment" Good. That's a good start. Now develop that theme.