That?s the impression TIME seems to offer in explaining its choice of Ben Bernanke as 2009 ?person of the year.?
In an article managing editor Richard Stengel labels a ?magisterial piece,? writer Michael Grunwald practically oozes with statist admiration as he tells us:
So when turbulence in U.S. housing markets metastasized into the worst global financial crisis in more than 75 years, he conjured up trillions of new dollars and blasted them into the economy; engineered massive public rescues of failing private companies; ratcheted down interest rates to zero; lent to mutual funds, hedge funds, foreign banks, investment banks, manufacturers, insurers and other borrowers who had never dreamed of receiving Fed cash; jump-started stalled credit markets in everything from car loans to corporate paper; revolutionized housing finance with a breathtaking shopping spree for mortgage bonds; blew up the Fed’s balance sheet to three times its previous size; and generally transformed the staid arena of central banking into a stage for desperate improvisation.
Never mind the negative impact of government ?improvisation? on entrepreneurs? willingness to make the investments that create jobs and expand the economy.
If the previous paragraph hadn?t offered Grunwald enough reasons to swoon, the following one surely did:
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. The decisions he has made, and those he has yet to make, will shape the path of our prosperity, the direction of our politics and our relationship to the world.
If the article leaves you with a high degree of comfort about the advisability of leaving our economic future in the hands of the Fed chairman, perhaps you ought to read Thomas Woods? Meltdown.
