From Bruce Krasting:

Bernanke's testimony to the House last week and to the Senate yesterday held no surprises. Ben has promised to maintain monetary policy at DEFCON 4 levels for as far into the future as we can see.

The prepared remarks were identical for both presentations. I reviewed Bernanke's October 4, 2011 testimony before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee. There is something missing in the 2012 reports to Congress that was included in Ben's statement just a few months ago. Here's what he said in October 2011 about inflation:

Longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable according to the five-year-forward measure of inflation compensation derived from yields on nominal and inflation-protected Treasury securities suggests that inflation expectations among investors may have moved lower recently.

So last October, Ben was touting up the TIPS/Bond spread as a confirmation that the broad expectation for inflation was very tame. In fact, when Ben made those comments in October he was...

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