CHICAGO - To hear Ben Bernanke talk about the housing slump, you might think the Federal Reserve is still in need of a one-arm economist.

In a speech to a banking conference in Chicago Thursday, the Federal Reserve chairman said "the cooling of the housing market is an important source of this slowdown" in the economy.

In particular, he said, new curbs by lenders on mortgages for less creditworthy homebuyers, so-called subprime mortgages, "are expected to be a source of some restraint on home purchases and residential investment in coming quarters."

On the other hand, Bernanke said, "we believe the effect of the troubles in the subprime sector on the broader housing market will likely be limited, and we do not expected significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or the financial system."

As a result, financial newswires wrote apparently conflicting headlines, including "Bernanke Says Subprime Woes to Hurt Housing Market," and "U.S. Economy to Mostly Dodge Mortgage Woes." Traders in stocks, bonds and currencies found no direction in his remarks, leaving markets little changed for the day.

This apparent double-speak - call it nuance or equivocation - was commonplace under Bernanke's predecessor, Alan Greenspan.

Indeed, in a presentation Thursday to business executives in Atlanta, Greenspan said opaque answers to straightforward questions were part of the job, because he couldn't say "no comment" and he didn't want financial markets to overreact.

"What tends to happen is your syntax collapses," he said, according to a report of his appearance by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

"All of a sudden you are mumbling. It often works. I created a new language which we now call FedSpeak. Unless you are expert at it, you can't tell that I didn't say anything."

But economists and financial experts, who parse every utterance of Federal Reserve leaders, see important differences between Greenspan-speak and Bernanke-speak. Bernanke does say something, they say, but his task isn't made easier by private citizen Greenspan's comments on current economic policy issues.

Kenneth Kim, an economist at Stone & McCarthy Research Associates, said the difference between Greenspan and Bernanke is obvious. Greenspan is no longer Fed chief. "Now, he can speak his mind and tell it like it is," Kim said.

On Thursday, Greenspan told his Atlanta audience that the "surge" in subprime mortgage lending in recent years "is suppressing the whole home building area. We have got a continued period of weakness in new home construction."

He declined to forecast the consequences of the problem, but said in March that there was a "one-third probability" of a recession this year in the United States.

Bernanke speaks for an institution that he has vowed to make more collegial than the Greenspan era, Kim said.

"He has to consider the inputs of others, because he has promised to bring more transparency and a committee-based approach to policy making," he said.

Until the Fed prepares its mid-year economic outlook in late June, Bernanke is speaking from the Fed's official economic forecast issued in February, Kim said. That forecast predicted that the economy would rebound in the second half of the year.

Kim and other economists think the February forecast is too optimistic and outdated, but it comprises Bernanke's current playbook.

Veteran Fed watcher David Resler, chief economist for Nomura Securities International, said Bernanke's remarks in Chicago Thursday were consistent in another sense.

The problems faced by subprime lenders and borrowers represent an effect, not a cause of the current housing slump, he said.

A reversal in the housing boom would have happened, even if lenders had not loosened lending standards to attract less credit-worth borrowers, Resler said. The housing bubble peaked at the same time that the subprime problem emerged as an issue, he said.

If credit markets outside subprime lending remain stable, as they apparently have, the spillover from subprime lending will be minimal, even as the housing slump persists, Resler said.

Kim Rupert, economist at Action Economics, agreed. Banking regulators are under pressure from Congress to justify their action or inaction as low-income borrowers got hooked by subprime mortgage schemes they couldn't afford, she added.

"Bernanke might have been feeling some heat that he was being too dismissive," she said.

But as Fed chief, Greenspan, who was known for his solo management of the Fed, probably would not have traveled to Chicago to present a clinical, conciliatory analysis of subprime lending woes, Rupert said.

"Greenspan did become more transparent in his last couple of years, but he might not have laid it out as Bernanke did," she said.