At the U.S. Federal Reserve's recent and first-ever public press conference, Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a spirited defense of the Fed's much-criticized policy of mass purchases of U.S. government bonds, or "quantitative easing." But was his justification persuasive?

Most economists viewed his performance as masterful, but the fact that the dollar has continued to slide while gold prices have continued to rise suggests considerable skepticism from markets. One of the hardest things in central banking is that investors often hear a very different message from that which the central bank intends to send.

The Fed, of course, has been forced to turn to "Q.E.," as traders call it, because its normal tool for fine-tuning inflation and growth, the overnight interest rate, is already zero.