WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ben Bernanke no longer leads the Federal Reserve, but he's hardly letting up in his defense of the ultra-low-rate policies he engineered — and his successor, Janet Yellen, has continued.

In his first post as a new blogger Monday, Bernanke struck back at critics who he said had charged the Bernanke Fed with, among other things, "throwing seniors under the bus" by keeping rates too low for too long.

He also disputed accusations that the Fed is still distorting financial markets and investment decisions by keeping rates "artificially low."

It would have been wiser for those foreign central banks to keep rates low to encourage borrowing and spending and strengthen their economies. This would have allowed those nations to more quickly approach what economists call an "equilibrium rate" — an interest rate consistent with healthy levels of employment and investment.

Bernanke said that in future blog posts, he would discuss what characteristics of the economy contribute most to the economy's low-rate environment — an environment that, he noted, exists overseas as well as in the United States.

He said he was enjoying the freedom to express his thoughts without having to fear that he might jolt financial markets. He recalled that his predecessor as Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan, once told a Senate committee that he had learned as a central banker "to mumble with great incoherence."