The fear is that he did so because it is hard for central bankers to say no.
Above all, cheaper oil would ease concerns about inflation, and so reduce the need for central bankers to increase interest rates.
Inflation is typically a concern for central bankers looking to cut rates.
The real economy is just too complex for central bankers to fine-tune.
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This complicates the task for central bankers of setting interest rates.
The immediate challenge for central bankers is how to curb the unusual spike in the cost that banks charge to lend to each other, via the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR).
Bernie Fraser, a former governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, has even proposed creating a new regional central bank for central bankers, rather like the Bank for International Settlements in Basle.
In global finance, the Bank for International Settlements should be transformed from a discussion forum for central bankers into a policy co-ordinating body, turning it into the world's central bank with a mandate to keep inflation stable and low worldwide.
After all if no euro, is there a need for European central bankers?
But still, it feels like an interesting moment: dangerous for the Fed, in the short term, perhaps, but also one that could open up new opportunities for other central bankers down the road.
He repeated the standard arguments for why central bankers should not target house prices: that bubbles can be identified only after the fact, and that pricking them with higher interest rates might do more harm than good.
Across the Pacific, many have blamed Japan's central bankers for being too half-hearted about tackling deflation.
That would be anathema for inflation-wary central bankers, and how could the Fed hit that target in a deflationary world where ample supply exceeds weak demand?
Europe is a bigger worry for Australia's central bankers.
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However research by the Bank for International Settlements, the central bankers' central bank, provides a useful counterpoint.
For the most part, the central bankers are Keynesian, with a dollop of monetarist thrown in here and there.
Europe's central bankers are desperate for it to take over the bond-buying duties if markets stay skittish over Italy and Spain.
So if inflation rates were to hit the mark central bankers have set for them about 2% and if lenders were to want the interest payments that they normally expect, Japan and Britain would have to devote about a quarter of their entire annual output just to service debt.
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Economists at the Bank for International Settlements often regarded as the central bankers' central bank have long been warning that monetary policy can only buy time for governments, financial institutions and households to repair their balance sheets.
To be fair to the politicians, this fiscal balancing act is far harder than the central bankers' task, for two reasons.
Long-term interest rates, for instance, are not set by central bankers, but by credit markets that eventually price credit risk into the price of different debt instruments.
One answer could be to take fiscal policy out of the hands of elected leaders, just as responsibility for monetary policy has been handed to independent central bankers.
The question of whether central banks should be involved in bank supervision is an old chestnut that central bankers and academics have debated for many years and practice in the years before the global financial crisis had swung towards separate bank regulators.
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As Mr Borio at the Bank for International Settlements points out, many of the ideas around countercyclicality (setting aside more capital in good times) and macroprudential regulation (safeguarding the stability of the whole banking system as well as of individual banks) were oven-ready, having been worked on by a coterie of central bankers, academics and regulators for a number of years.
The credit crunch presented central bankers with dual dilemmas, one for each of their two jobs.
For over a year, since August 2007, central bankers, principally Mr Bernanke, have been trying to make this toxic debt liquid.
When finance ministers, central bankers and economists descend on Washington for global economic meetings this weekend, their main priority is to restore confidence to financial markets.
With markets heavily dependent on additional rounds on QE across all major economies, Wall Street will be looking for clues as to what is the next step central bankers are deliberating to take.
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Since Oskar Lafontaine, Germany's new finance minister, and his centre-left friends in France and Italy seem intent on a fiscal stimulus in any event, the steely central bankers are probably right to hold off for now.
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