Bernanke named 'Person of the Year'

Bernanke named 'Person of the Year'

Bernanke has been praised and criticised for his handling of the recession [AFP] Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has been named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2009. Wednesday's announcement comes a day before a Senate Banking Committee vote on whether Bernanke should be given another term. Bernanke, who is 56, will be featured on the cover of the magazine that hits stores on Friday. Last year's winner was then US President-elect Barack Obama and the 2007 winner was Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Time said Bernanke was the reason the US financial crisis was not worse. The saviour? "The recession was the story of the year. Without Ben Bernanke ... it would have been a lot worse," Richard Stengel, Time magazine's managing editor, said in a statement on Wednesday. special report We look at the implications of the world economic crisis Counting The Cost: Watch Al Jazeera's weekly business show Fault Lines: The Colour of Recession "We've rarely had such a perfect revision of the cliche that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. "Bernanke didn't just learn from history; he wrote it himself and was damned if he was going to repeat it," he said. The magazine also considered the first woman Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and Nato's Commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McCrystal, for the award. Other previous title-holders have included U2 frontman Bono, former US President George Bush, and Amazon.com CEO and founder, Jeff Bezos. Bernanke was sworn in as Federal Reserve chairman in February 2006. He is a former Princeton University professor and an expert on the Great Depression.

Source: Agencies