Bernanke's PR Push Rewrites Fed Script

The Wall Street Journal - WASHINGTON -- Ben Bernanke became Federal Reserve chairman intent on making the central bank less personality-driven than it was under Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker. But as he confronts an economic crisis that has pushed the Fed to shatter precedent and lend trillions of dollars, Mr. Bernanke is waging a public-relations offensive that casts him in the starring role.

The latest example came Tuesday at Atlanta's Morehouse College, where Mr. Bernanke delivered what amounted to an Economics 101 lecture on the crisis. On a day when the government said U.S. retail sales had fallen a worse-than-expected 1.1% in March, Mr. Bernanke told students he's "fundamentally optimistic" about the economy's prospects. After his speech, he sat with undergraduates at a table and took questions with television cameras rolling.

The Fed chief's efforts to speak plainly to Americans come on the heels of a March interview with CBS television's "60 Minutes" and a February appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, where he took questions from a crowd of journalists.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123975237751018765.html