Since the day Ben Bernanke was appointed the 14th chairman of the Federal Reserve, the US economy has not grown by a single dollar in real terms. The average price of a house has fallen by almost a third. Stocks are down 20 per cent, having halved this year from their peak. Unemployment is approaching a 10th of all Americans seeking work. The target federal funds rate is virtually zero and, in the short term at least, deflation is looming. Hardly an inspiring record for anyone heading an institution whose official objectives are “maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates”.

Yet Mr Bernanke was nominated by the president for a second term on Tuesday to near unanimous approval. Markets cheered. All of which highlights a strange truth about central banks and those who run them. Everyone seems desperately to need to believe in their powers – in spite of recent evidence suggesting they have as little idea about what is going on as anyone else. That the Fed rushed to cut interest rates nine times in little over a year at the beginning of this recession – as helpful as this was – was hardly the measured action of a body that was ahead of the curve.