Skip to about the 28 minute mark in the video below of Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke’s press conference yesterday and you’ll hear the confusing, not-very-helpful message the central bank has for savers in our super-low interest rate environment.

Basically, his answer to Gregg Robb of Marketwatch about the difficulties being experienced by fixed-income investors makes no sense as he confuses conservative investments with riskier ones in the rather disingenuous answer excerpted below:

In the case of savers, we think about all these issues and we certainly recognize that the low interest rates we’re using to try to stimulate investment and expansion of the economy also pose a cost on savers who have a lower return. And we do hear about that obviously and we do think about that.

I guess the response I would make is that the savers in our economy are dependent on a healthy economy in order to get adequate returns, in particular, people who own stocks, corporate bonds, as well as Treasury securities. And if our economy is in really bad shape, then they’re not going to get good returns on those investments.

So, I think what we need to do is, when the economy goes into a very weak situation, then low interest rates are needed to help restore the economy to something closer to full employment and increase growth and that, in turn, will lead ultimately to higher returns across all assets for savers and investors.

That’s little comfort for all the risk-averse savers out there just looking to get more than one percent on a certificate of deposit when the inflation rate is running at three or four times that amount (by government measure, your results may be much higher).