Wall Street banks have a peculiar way of conducting their public relations. What do they do to get on my good graces (so that I’ll cut interest rates more drastically to bail them out of their mess)? They have their staff economists feed the New York Times’ Louis Uchitelle a story headlined “For Bernanke, a Question of Toughness” — questioning if I have the balls for the job.

Now, I say “economists” only to humor the Times. The folks quoted in that article, such as “chief domestic economist” for Goldman Sachs Jan Hatzius and “senior economist” at JPMorgan Chase James Glassman, are nothing but glorified PR flacks. You can’t even find a bio for Jan Hatzius if you Google him, but a Google search will turn up his donations to a Goldman PAC. Call your spokesman an “economist” though, despite their break with the academy and their long list of conflicts of interest, and they become a reliable source.

Would a reporter lead an article about setting tariff rates by quoting a General Motors “trade expert”?

Being an economist is like being a consultant, philosopher or (dare I say it) a journalist. Anyone can call themselves one.

Is that tough enough for you, Louis Uchitelle?