The biggest sales job in the US: Obama and Ben Bernanke try to convince America the economy is good

There is a lot of revisionism out there, former Fed chair said Wednesday. But as he and others protect their legacy, are they trying to make the economy look better than it is?

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Ben Bernanke is retired and happy, as the former Federal Reserve Chairman is quick to tell anyone listening. And while he no longer has to worry about the current state of the US economy thats Janet Yellens job now he is still giving the 2008 crisis a lot of thought. So much, in fact, that he is writing a book about it: a memoir of sorts to serve as a written record to make sure everyone has the story straight.

So its a good time to ask: what story is that, exactly?

Nobody is going to come out looking all that good, I tell you, when historians write it, but again I ask only for those future stories to think in real time and dont impose the retrospective knowledge on what we were seeing as we went through the crisis.

Moving the market is not a great thing, because if you are communicating clearly and people understand what you are doing, then you shouldnt be surprising the market very much.

For a while there, the Fed was well below the IRS in popularity and I tried to respond to that by going on 60 Minutes and doing other public venues which I thought was very important because we needed to explain to the public what we were doing, why we were doing it, and why it was in the broader public interest for us to be doing these things. You know, I had a lot on my plate and I wish we could have done even more and gotten better understanding in the public about what we were doing.

Over the past four and a half years, our businesses have created 10 million new jobs; this is the longest uninterrupted stretch of private sector job creation in our history. ... Right now, there are more job openings than at any time since 2001. All told, the United States has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and every other advanced economy combined.