So it’s come to this. A former professor of economics turned central banker can keep policymakers and investors on the edge of their seats, waiting for his latest pronouncement. That tells us two things. First, in the near-term, the president and Congress are irrelevant, frozen in mutual antipathy and therefore not in the policy game as deficits mount and another downgrade threatens. Seond, Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke, afflicted with a dual mandate to fight both inflation and unemployment, has decided that boosting the labor market takes precedence over his other mandate—or, to be more favorable to the chairman, that inflation is so tame that he can concentrate on engineering a “sustained improvement in labor market conditions.” And will continue to focus on jobs and run the presses even when the economy is growing at a relatively rapid rate.

Never mind that prices rose in August at their fastest rate in three years, due largely to increases in fuel and food prices. The Fed prefers to take those annoying items out of its inflation calculations, but consumers who eat, drive and heat their homes are not certain that the Fed’s economists are in close touch with the reality of everyday living.