Laurence ball bernanke biography

On Matt Yglesias’ reading of “Ben Bernanke and the Zero Bound,” Laurence Ball is saying that Bernanke needed to be more of a jerk:

Former Treasury Secretary and former National Economic Council director
Lawrence Summers has always suffered in the eyes of many for being a bit
of a jerk.

But an amusing-yet-thorough paper by Lawrence Ball
indicates that this disposition might have made Summers an excellent
choice for a job he coveted and didn’t get–chairman of the Federal
Reserve Board.

Ball is admittedly coy in the paper; he focuses on Bernanke’s change of mind rather than whether Bernanke was right to change his mind.  Still, if you read between the lines, it’s pretty clear that Ball is strongly criticizing Bernanke. 

That said, I don’t think Matt correctly interprets Ball’s underlying criticism.  Ball’s not saying that Bernanke should have been a jerk.  He’s saying that Bernanke knew the