Ben Bernanke: TIME Magazine's Man of the Year Nomination

( Ben Bernanke: the Man of the Year Award)

Last Monday, the TIME magazine's managing editor announced the list for 2009's Person of the Year, including Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, and giving the first award to Ben Bernanke.

Person of the Year, formerly Man of the Year, is an annual issue of the United States newsmagazine Time that features and profiles a man, woman, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year".

The tradition of selecting a Man of the Year began in 1927 as an attempt to remedy the editorial embarrassment earlier that year for not having aviator Charles Lindbergh on its cover following his historic trans-Atlantic flight.
Since then, individual people, groups of people, an invention or even a planet have been selected for the special year end issue. The only women to win the renamed recognition so far were those recognized as The Whistleblowers (2002) and Melinda Gates (jointly with Bill Gates and Bono in 2005). Four women were granted the title when it was still Man of the Year.
This 2009, the Time Magazine has nominated Ben Bernanke for the Man of the Year Award. He is the man sitting in his Washington office, talking about the economy without a commanding presence. His arguments aren't partisan or ideological; they're methodical, grounded in data and the latest academic literature.  

Bernanke is the 56-year-old chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the U.S., an independent government agency that conducts monetary policy. And ever since global credit markets began imploding, its mild-mannered chairman has dramatically expanded those powers and reinvented the Fed.

[Picture: Albert Watson]

[TIME Magazine]

[Ben Bernanke's Blog]