A typical Alan Greenspan speech is like a bad adult film. After a droning hour of passive voice and nominalization, Greenspan delivers an explosive, headline-making phrase–"irrational exuberance" or "infectious greed." Even novice

journalists have no trouble spotting the money shot.

Nonetheless, on May 8, appearing by satellite at a banking conference in Chicago, the chairman of the Federal Reserve was not only in a different medium, he was playing by a different set of rules. His speech–about derivatives–was peppered with colorful metaphors, references to wildcat banking and hard-hitting criticism, but there was no obvious climax. Consequently, most newspapers ignored the speech, and those that covered it tended to contradict each other.