FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD CHAIRMAN Alan Greenspan is famous for his ability to use the language with such precision that it ceases to be a means of communication. He once told a congressional committeeman, who congratulated him on the clarity of his response to a question, “Then I must have misspoken.”

Under most circumstances, this gift of tongues is a useful endowment for a central banker of Greenspan’s importance: a man whose words can move markets must often be certain that no one has a clear understanding of what he is saying. But so accustomed are those who make a living deciphering the meaning of the chairman’s utterances, that they often fail to grasp what he is saying when he chooses to be perfectly clear, and use language that is not wrapped in obscure jargon, but is merely a straightforward statement of intentions.