Ben Bernanke delivers a political lecture

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From the WSJ editorial page:

St. Augustine at the Fed
Ben Bernanke delivers a political lecture.

Ben Bernanke's annual Jackson Hole policy speech on Friday—more hyped than Hurricane Irene—contained little news about monetary policy. But such is the Federal Reserve Chairman's influence among the Wall Street-media establishment that his speech is being celebrated as a rebuke of Congress for its fiscal drama. He should have stuck to his day job.

"The country could be well served by a better process for making fiscal decisions," Mr. Bernanke declared. "The negotiations that took place over the summer disrupted financial markets and probably the economy as well, and similar events in the future could, over time, seriously jeopardize the willingness of investors around the world to hold U.S. financial assets or to make direct investments in job-creating U.S. businesses."

... Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer "read between the lines of the Chairman's remarks" that "Republicans are hurting the economy," and the White House more or less agreed.

Mr. Bernanke also lectured that "U.S. fiscal policy must be placed on a sustainable path," though not by cutting spending in the short-term. So the Fed chief joins the Keynesian queue of spending St. Augustines—Lord, make us fiscally chaste, but not yet....

The remarks also sound like an alibi for the Fed's own inability to midwife a faster recovery. Republicans have run the House for fewer than eight months. Mr. Bernanke has been Fed Chairman since February 2006 and has presided over 32 months of historically easy monetary policy in the name of spurring faster growth and avoiding deflation. What we have instead is a mild stagflation—1% GDP growth, 9.1% unemployment, and a commodity price bubble that has robbed middle-class real incomes.

Is this John Boehner's fault?

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Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904199404576536692576451976.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop