I think, as is becoming increasingly evident, that Bernanke might be playing this just right. He timed his comments about the eventual need to slow QE well, and I think has earned the right to be trusted that he has the judgement to time the actual ending of QE. As Jim Cramer put well in his Real Money column: "Did Ben Bernanke get it right again? We all think that he handled the signals about QE3 tapering with a level of ham-handedness that was out of synch with his masterful ways. But how about if he saw a raft of better-than-expected news coming out -- news about home sales being strong, news about consumer confidence being high, news about home prices advancing rapidly, news about durable goods being better than expected -- and he knew he had to get ahead of all of these positives to avoid being run over by the market itself."
All of that "better-than-expected news" is from prior months. This was before interest (read: mortgage) rates took a severe hike. Every time Bernanke opens his pie hole and even mildly suggests "tapering," the markets will hate it. That's the trap he's in. Feeling good about housing numbers from a couple of months ago won't help.