Ben Bernanke was elegant, concise, and yet he missed the point. Last week, in his testimony to congress, the chairman of the Federal Reserve presented his “exit strategy” – a toolkit of policies to prevent an increase in inflation once the economy starts to recover. The policies are the best modern central banking has to offer.

But simply possessing such tools does not make an exit strategy. For that, Mr Bernanke would, at the very least, need to define the circumstances that would trigger the use of such tools. I doubt very much that either Mr Bernanke, or his counterparts in Europe, are in a position to provide a credible definition at this point.