The great and powerful Jon Hilsenrath

Barbara Kollmeyer of Marketwatch.com writes about recent coverage of the Federal Reserve Board.

Kollmeyer writes, “After all the seriousness about the Fed meeting that kicks off Tuesday, Ed Yardeni, chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research, injects some humor by asking: ‘Who is the Fed Chairman anyway?’

“‘Could it be that Ben Bernanke isn’t actually the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve? He may be fronting for the real wizard behind the curtain: Jon Hilsenrath. A few months ago I signed up for Google news alerts to follow both Bernanke and Hilsenrath. Lately, I’ve been receiving more news about the outlook for monetary policy from Hilsenrath than from Bernanke.’

“Hilsenrath is chief economics reporter for The Wall Street Journal (which, like MarketWatch, is owned by News Corp) and triggered what some are calling a Hilsenrally when he reported last week that the Fed will likely push back on market expectations for a rate rise. Financial Times economics editor Robin Harding briefly joined this crowd Monday when an article  he wrote suggested Bernanke will signal Fed tapering at its meeting and press conference this week. Markets fell and eventually recovered after Harding tweeted this:

Read more here.