What seems more likely?
- Central bankers who control the economy do not understand the basic principles of the system they manage.
- They lie about their motivations for political reasons.
The more interesting question is, if you incentives are strong enough to want to deny the nature of a system, do you become a liar or do you genuinely stop understanding it? Was Yellen's bafflement at the non-transitory inflation a mere act, or was it genuine confusion caused by a core corruption of her own understanding of basic economics?