Bernanke A, House committee members B, Paulson C-

Those are the grades I would give after watching an hour of Bernanke and Paulson testifying before Barney Frank's committee yesterday. Bernanke was articulate and clearly conversant with all of the details of the big issues on his plate and of the related issues on the plates of Treasury, the SEC, and other institutions. Paulson was neither articulate nor informed; all I heard from him was a blather of randomly-connected abstract buzz words. My grade gives him the benefit of the doubt. Given the general reputation of Congress for being clueless, I was pleasantly surprised that at least 80 percent of the members who commented and asked questions seemed to know what they were talking about and could even ask incisive follow-up questions.