Time magazine on Wednesday named Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke its 2009 "Person of the Year."
"The recession was the story of the year," Time managing editor
Richard Stengel said in a statement. "Without Ben Bernanke, Time's 2009
Person of the Year, it would have been a lot worse.
"We've rarely had such a perfect revision of the cliche that those
who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it," Stengel said.
"Bernanke didn't just learn from history; he wrote it himself and was damned if he was going to repeat it."
Time said the runners-up for the award were General Stanley
McChrystal, "the Chinese worker," Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US
House of Representatives, and Jamaican sprint champion Usain Bolt.
President Barack Obama, last year's winner, and Apple chief
executive Steve Jobs were also on a shortlist of finalists revealed by
Time on Monday.
Time senior writer Michael Grunwald said the main reason Bernanke
was selected is because he is "the most important player guiding the
world's most important economy.
"His creative leadership helped ensure that 2009 was a period of
weak recovery rather than catastrophic depression, and he still wields
unrivaled power over our money, our jobs, our savings and our national
future," Grunwald said.
The 56-year-old Bernanke, in an interview with Time, said the
financial crisis had brought the United States "very, very close to a
depression.
"The markets were in anaphylactic shock," he said. "I'm not happy
with where we are, but it's a lot better than where we could be... Of
course there were things we could have done better, but this was a
perfect storm."
On bringing down unemployment, Bernanke said "the additional steps aren't as obvious or clear as the ones we've already taken.
"It's an enormous problem. There aren't easy solutions," he said.
Asked about banker compensation, Bernanke said "I think that bankers
ought to recognize that the government and the taxpayer saved the
financial system from utter collapse last year.
"And in recognizing that, I would think that bankers ought to look
in the mirror and decide that perhaps there should be some more
restraint in how much they pay themselves, given what the government
and the taxpayer did to protect the system," he said.
1 Comments in Response to Time magazine names Bernanke 'Person of the Year'
My brother asked me what I thought about this and this was my reply email to him:
It's simply propaganda in the face of Bernanke's ongoing re-appointment difficulties.
Dodd: Bernanke Confirmation ‘Not Necessarily’ a Foregone Conclusion Eliot Spitzer: Geithner, Bernanke “Complicit” in Financial Crisis and Should Go Preventing Political Moral Hazard Means Stopping Bernanke"We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries."(Taken from dougpowers.com) - The list has been pared down to a few finalists, among them: Nancy Pelosi, Ben Bernanke, Steve Jobs, Usain Bolt, Barack Obama, General McChrystal, and “the Chinese Worker.”
Whom else on the list is currently fighting for their job? It doesn't really matter though; they've got JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon waiting in the wings. It's like trading "Papa Doc" Duvalier for Mao Zedong. Either way you're fucked.
Time Magazine = Bilderberg/Trilateral Commission/CFR Agenda
- David Rockefeller, founder of the Trilateral Commission, in an address to a meeting of The Trilateral Commission, in June, 1991.