Time names Bernanke ’09 ‘Person of the Year’

MarketWatch

NEW YORK — Time magazine on Wednesday named Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke its person of the year for 2009, saying the story of the year — the weak economy — could have been far worse if not for the mild-mannered academic.

“We’ve rarely had such a perfect revision of the clich that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” Time’s Managing Editor Richard Stengel wrote in an editor’s letter, noting Bernanke had once written that the Great Depression could have been avoided if the Fed hadn’t taken some of the actions it did back in the 1930s.

“Bernanke didn’t just learn from history; he wrote it himself and was damned if he was going to repeat it,” wrote Stengel.

The accolade may boost Bernanke’s standing on Capitol Hill. The Senate Banking Committee is expected to vote today on Bernanke’s nomination to a second four-year term.

The 56-year-old Bernanke has come under intense criticism from Senators on the far right and far left but does enjoy the support of the broad middle of the political spectrum.

Analysts think Bernanke will be approved by the Banking Committee and then the full Senate to a second term, but many senators up for re-election next fall are expected to oppose him.

The Fed has become the whipping boy on Capitol Hill for the financial crisis.

The central bank faces serious challenges from lawmakers who want greater oversight over monetary policy deliberations and others who want to strip the central bank of its vast oversight responsibilities over the nation’s biggest banks.

Many analysts say the latter reform has a good chance of success.

The Fed’s unpopularity has come despite something of a charm offensive by Bernanke. He was the first Fed chairman to appear on an interview for “60 Minutes” and was even filmed strolling through his hometown of Dillon, S.C.

In an interview with Time, Bernanke said he decided to speak “directly to the public” after surveys showed “a lot of fear and uncertainty” in the public after the financial sector froze up last fall, causing the economic recession to deepen.

But Bernanke remains largely under wraps and avoids tough questions about the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the disappearance of all U.S. large broker-dealers almost overnight.

Time was able to trumpet its interview with Bernanke as “the first full, on-the-record print interview with Bernanke since he became Chairman of the Federal Reserve” in 2005.