Time Magazine 2009 Person of the Year is Ben Bernanke

Was Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the most influential person in the United States in 2009? Speculations surrounding Time magazine's pick for "Person of the Year" included possible recipients such as President Barack Obama, Pope John Paul II and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, but the shy, retiring Bernanke has been awarded the honor - if you can call it that.

Time's Person of the Year has been awarded to a mixed bag of recipients in the past. Notable Persons of the Year include Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono (2005), Ronald Reagan (1983), Lech Wałęsa (1981), Martin Luther King (1963), John F. Kennedy (1961) - and you (2006). But also on the list are Chiang Kai-Shek and Soon May-ling (1937) Adolf Hitler (1938) and Joseph Stalin (1939) - not exactly heroes but influential.

Nonetheless, Chairman Bernanke, credited with playing a large role in rescuing the American economy from virtual collapse, has officially joined their ranks. The question is, Did Time Magazine get it right? When the magazine named "You" the Person of the Year just three years ago, it received some criticism from those who felt there were a number of newsmakers who had been overlooked namely Hugo Chávez and/or Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. According to Bernanke, "Virtually every large financial firm in the world was in significant danger of going bankrupt because of the money being withdrawn quickly from those firms. And we knew, and I knew - based on my experience as a scholar, based on my experience as a policy maker - I knew that if the financial system, the global financial system, were to collapse in the sense that many of the largest firms were to fail, and the financial sector essentially stopped functioning, that the implications of that for the global economy would be catastrophic, that it we would be facing, potentially, another depression of the severity and length of the depression in the 1930s." He says the Fed had to act aggressively to stop the crisis.

Time explains their choice for Person of the Year 2009 this way: "Bernanke also has thoughts about the economy's future - and we'll get to them soon. First, though, we should explain why his face is on the cover of this issue. The overriding story of 2009 was the economy - the lousiness of it, and the fact that it wasn't far lousier. It was a year of escalating layoffs, bankruptcies and foreclosures, the "new frugality" and the "new normal." It was also a year of green shoots, a rebounding Dow and a fragile sense that the worst is over. Even the big political stories of 2009 - the struggles of the Democrats; the tea-party takeover of the Republicans; the stimulus; the deficit; GM and Chrysler; the backlash over bailouts and bonuses; the furious debates over health care, energy and financial regulation; the constant drumbeat of jobs, jobs, jobs - were, at heart, stories about the economy. And it's Bernanke's economy."

It is inarguable that Bernanke held an enormously influential position this year across the globe. But even though the immediate crisis seems to have been averted, many financial professionals - not to mention all the taxpaying citizens - are now wondering why companies and banks (like Lehman Brothers, AIG, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo)³ who received large bailouts have failed to put that money back into the national economy by making loans, etc., yet have either paid or plan to pay large bonuses to their top executives. Did Bernanke do enough? Was the bailout sans regulation a good idea? Who has benefited the most from Bernanke's influence?

Sources:

Time magazine
Time magazine, Persons of the Year 1927 - 2009³New York Times, Tracking the $700 Billion Bailout, June 24, 2009