T hat jump in share prices (even after Monday’s tiny dip): Start of a recovery from a market bottom, or a “dead cat bounce” typical of bear markets? That drop in oil prices: the end of successive increases, or a pause before we head to $200 oil?

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s semiannual report to Congress last week was one of the gloomiest he has ever put before politicians struggling to decide what to do next. Here was a Fed chairman who has deployed every weapon at his command, and manufactured new ones in his fight to right the economy, and is not certain he has succeeded.