Gold 
Fed Stokes Fear of End to Easing
”Greenspan’s successor as Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, has moved toward greater transparency and clearer, more frequent public communication. Perhaps too much so. A chorus of somewhat conflicting Fed voices and messages last week did more to confuse markets than edify them, putting investors on edge about what to expect from the central bank in the coming months as it decides how and when to dial back its $85 billion monthly bond-buying program.
Parsing what the Fed says, always a popular sport in financial markets, reached a new level of fussiness on Wednesday. Bernanke spoke before Congress that morning, as expected delivering a dovish, stay-the-course message, similar to what had been laid out in speeches by St. Louis Fed President James Bullard and New York Fed President William Dudley earlier in the week.
AROUND MID-MORNING, listeners homed in on a single Bernanke comment, made in response to a question about whether the Fed might start tapering off its quantitative-easing efforts before Labor Day. Bernanke left open the possibility that the central bank could conceivably begin to wind down the program within the period covered by the next few Fed policy-committee meetings.
Markets promptly tanked.”
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