The Federal Reserve: our allocater of credit, wealth, and opportunity

Is there a better wordsmith than George Will? Not many. That is why it is notable that Will writes today about how journalists write about the Federal Reserve. Will's opening sentence:

Because Ben Bernanke's public persona is as mild as milk, the transformation in American governance in which he has participated is imperfectly understood and hence insufficiently deplored.

Later in his column he notes,

Slowing the Fed’s bond purchases is called “tapering,” which means more modest “quantitative easing.” This is how governments talk when trying not to be understood. By continuing the pace of “easing” — printing money — the Fed has acknowledged that its fine-tuning has failed.

To assume that a few government officials can and should steer America’s vast, globally connected economy — hundreds of millions of people making trillions of decisions a day — is a kind of confidence peculiar to the progressive temperament.

I don't think I have ever read one of Will's columns without needing to look up the meaning of a word. In this week's column, for example, he writes,

The Fed has become the model of applied progressivism, under which power flows to clever regulators who operate independent of political control. The Fed is, however, a creation of Congress, which may not forever refrain from putting a bridle and snaffle on a Fed that increasingly allocates credit, wealth and opportunity.

Snaffle? I Googled it:

noun:

1. (on a bridle) a simple bit, typically a jointed one, used with a single set of reins. a bridle with a snaffle bit. noun: snaffle bridle; plural noun: snaffle bridles

verb

1. take (something) for oneself, typically quickly or without permission. "shall we snaffle some of Bernard's sherry?"