The story was updated at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Does Fed Chair Ben Bernanke know what he's doing? We better hope so. Every tweet and cluck from the Open Market Committee has the power to move markets, as we saw again yesterday. Traders dumped stocks after reading the minutes from the central bank's March 13 meeting; the report hinted at a slightly better job market and doused hopes for another round of quantitative easing. (And today, stocks opened sharply lower, after investors fully digested the Fed's latest release.)

No wonder all eyes are on the Fed. With fiscal policy frozen, monetary stimulus is the only game in town. Not only is the Fed rolling the dice that near-zero interest rates will promote growth and not light the inflation fuse, the central bank...