In an anti-Fed rant this week, I criticized Ben Bernanke for saying that any criticism of the Federal Reserve is based on misconceptions. What are these misconceptions? Give me an argument; don’t just say I’m wrong and then rest on the laurels of your credentials and prestige. I wrote:

I would like to hear Bernanke elaborate on his claim. I would like to understand just what it is that I don’t understand when I criticize the Federal Reserve Bank. How are my conceptions actually misconceptions?

What do you know– the very next day, The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston posted the text of a speech that Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren gave today, entitled Four Common Misconceptions About the Federal Reserve. Now I’m not seriously suggesting that The Boston Fed was responding to us, but it’s a pretty cool coincidence, especially since we know they’re reading blogs that talk about them and we’ve actually seen the traces of the Boston Federal Reserve IT department in our analytic logs. Cool, huh? Intentionally or not (again, probably not), The Boston Fed president answered my exact question and I’ve got to give him credit for doing that much. Of course I also have to rebut his answers, because they’re pretty weak.

Read my four rebuttals to the Fed president's four "misconceptions" here.