Bernanke speech shows effort to find Fed consensus (AP)

AP - TOUGH JOB: Ben Bernanke is struggling to build consensus among Federal Reserve officials about what steps are needed — if any — to give the economy a boost.

Tim Duy: And Then There is Bernanke, by Tim Duy: Lots of Fed chatter in the last week. For openers, some background from Reuters: It decided on May 1 to keep buying at an $85 billion monthly pace, and many economists say mixed economic data warrants keeping up the purchases through year-end.

The common wisdom among the punditocracy is that the Federal Reserve’s announcement of its new, open-ended bond-buying program will provide a big boost to President Obama’s reelection by juicing the stock market and economy.

Fed Chair Ben Bernanke has given his 2nd commencement speech of the season. The first was to the graduates of Simon's Rock, an offbeat school in Western Mass. Today he delivered a speech to graduates of Princeton, where of course he was an econ professor before becoming Fed chair.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was yapping about jobs today in his speech Five Questions about the Federal Reserve and Monetary Policy in Indianapolis. Bernanke asked five questions of himself and gave five self-serving responses, all absolving the Fed of its role in the global financial crisis. Bernanke also patted himself on the back numerous times (indeed in the answers to nearly every question).

The last time Ben Bernanke communicated to the public, the US stock market jumped, then plunged, and then soared, all over a few minutes -- no one was sure if his statement boded good or bad for the economy.So when the US Federal Reserve chairman speaks at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Friday, after weeks of extreme market turbulence, hopes are that he will deliver some clarity both on the economy's state and whether the Fed will give it a new boost.

THE Republican leadership sent Ben Bernanke a letter: