Time Magazine wrote:A bald man with a gray beard and tired eyes is sitting in his oversize Washington office, talking about the economy. He doesn't have a commanding presence. He isn't a mesmerizing speaker. He has none of the look-at-me swagger or listen-to-me charisma so common among men with oversize Washington offices. His arguments aren't partisan or ideological; they're methodical, grounded in data and the latest academic literature. When he doesn't know something, he doesn't bluster or bluff. He's professorial, which makes sense, because he spent most of his career as a professor.
He is not, in other words, a typical Beltway power broker. He's shy. He doesn't do the D.C. dinner-party circuit; he prefers to eat at home with his wife, who still makes him do the dishes and take out the trash. Then they do crosswords or read. Because Ben Bernanke is a nerd. (See pictures of Ben Bernanke's life from childhood to chairmanship.)
He just happens to be the most powerful nerd on the planet.
Bernanke is the 56-year-old chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the U.S., the most important and least understood force shaping the American — and global — economy. Those green bills featuring dead Presidents are labeled "Federal Reserve Note" for a reason: the Fed controls the money supply. It is an independent government agency that conducts monetary policy, which means it sets short-term interest rates — which means it has immense influence over inflation, unemployment, the strength of the dollar and the strength of your wallet. And ever since global credit markets began imploding, its mild-mannered chairman has dramatically expanded those powers and reinvented the Fed.
Professor Bernanke of Princeton was a leading scholar of the Great Depression. He knew how the passive Fed of the 1930s helped create the calamity — through its stubborn refusal to expand the money supply and its tragic lack of imagination and experimentation. Chairman Bernanke of Washington was determined not to be the Fed chairman who presided over Depression 2.0. 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. He didn't just reshape U.S. monetary policy; he led an effort to save the world economy.
Yeah, right. My cats could probably have managed the Fed better than he did. The Salon.com articles have some pretty biting commentary.
Warwolf Urban Combat Specialist
Why is it so goddamned hard to get little assholes like you to admit it when you fuck up? Is it pride? What gives you the right to have any pride?
–Darth Wong to vivftp
GOP message? Why don't they just come out of the closet: FASCISTS R' US –Patrick Degan
The GOP has a problem with anyone coming out of the closet. –18-till-I-die
Yeah, Bernanke's the asshole who helped get us into the mess we're in, and who continues to bend over the people and assrape them for the benefit of his banker buddies.
Link tags fixed ~Edi
aerius: I'll vote for you if you sleep with me. Lusankya: Deal!
Say, do you want it to be a threesome with your wife? Or a foursome with your wife and sister-in-law? I'm up for either.
My title was going to be "Time Continues Irrelevance Streak"
I think Micheal Jackson should have gotten it for his work with kids or Kanye for the speeches he gives at awardsw ceremonies.
He's defintely not a "typical" beltway person, he's a former Goldman Sachs executive, heading aan organization filled with other Goldmann Sachs former employees. Definitely no trend to be identified there....
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Never heard of the guy before. A person of the year does not have to be a good person, But at least they have to be notable. This is worst judgement since the Times picked some mayor of New York over Osama Bin Laden after 911 as the 2001 person of the year. If you have to do google their name then that person probably does not deserve the title "Person of the year".
I have to tell you something everything I wrote above is a lie.
There are many important people in the world. You can't decide "person of the year" by how important someone is but what have they done. What did Bernanke do so great this year compare to other high and mighty folks ?
I have to tell you something everything I wrote above is a lie.
Assraped the world while they smiled and thanked him for it?
Using your logic, Tiger Woods is more important as more people are paying attentionto him and his sex life than anything any of the Fed board members get involved and yet each Fed board member has infinitely more direct impact on your life than Tiger.
Maybe if they had an honest bone in their reporting bodies they could have had him as thr MotY but only if they portrayed him as the architect of the shitty state of the US economy. Instead they choke themselves on his cock and fall all over themselves to compliment his awesomitude.
Last edited by KrauserKrauser on 2009-12-16 03:55pm, edited 1 time in total.
VRWC : Justice League : SDN Weight Watchers : BOTM : Former AYVB
Resident Magic the Gathering Guru : Recovering MMORPG Addict
Sarevok wrote:Never heard of the guy before. A person of the year does not have to be a good person, But at least they have to be notable. This is worst judgement since the Times picked some mayor of New York over Osama Bin Laden after 911 as the 2001 person of the year. If you have to do google their name then that person probably does not deserve the title "Person of the year".
No. Rudy Giuliani was at least fairly important during 2001. The worst choice for Person of the Year was when they named "You" and put a mirror on the cover. Its pretty hard to top that.
To be "Person of the Year" you have to be recognised as a person who made a powerful impact on the world at the time, be it economic, political, milatarily or so on. It does not necessarily imply that the person is a "good" person or a "hero".
...or, at least, that's the justification Time used when Hitler was "Man of the Year" in 1938, and Joseph Stalin in 1939 and again in 1942, and the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.
Something about Libertarianism always bothered me. Then one day, I realized what it was:
Libertarian philosophy can be boiled down to the phrase, "Work Will Make You Free."
In Libertarianism, there is no Government, so the Bosses are free to exploit the Workers.
In Communism, there is no Government, so the Workers are free to exploit the Bosses.
So in Libertarianism, man exploits man, but in Communism, its the other way around! If all you want to do is have some harmless, mindless fun, go H3RE INST3ADZ0RZ!! Grrr! Fight my Brute, you pansy!
I could at least swallow that explanation if they recognized his importance but were critical of his actions and the negative impact of them but they aren't. Instead they donned their green B cheerleading uniforms and rah rahed yet more of their journalistic credibility away.
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Resident Magic the Gathering Guru : Recovering MMORPG Addict
KrauserKrauser wrote:I could at least swallow that explanation if they recognized his importance but were critical of his actions and the negative impact of them but they aren't. Instead they donned their green B cheerleading uniforms and rah rahed yet more of their journalistic credibility away.
I don't think Time does that. They just pick who they think had "influence" on affairs. Right or wrong, good or bad, that's who they pick. It's not a judgment of the person's worth as much as how his/her actions affected the world we live in.
The "Stupid Gene" is alive and well ! It resides in many forms, mostly in the "new" crop of Republicans !
But that comes into play in the article (link is in the OP):
But the main reason Ben Shalom Bernanke is TIME's Person of the Year for 2009 is that 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. 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.
...
The New Credit Channels. Bernanke has taken his research to heart, providing not just more money but targeted money, thawing out frozen credit markets and debuting seven blue-sky lending programs. When investors stopped buying the corporate paper that firms sell in overnight markets to meet their payroll, the Fed stepped in to buy it. When financing for securities backed by car loans, student loans, credit cards and mortgages dried up, the Fed opened new spigots to keep those markets open as well. This is one way the Fed's aid to Wall Street directly assisted Main Street, helping finance an estimated 3.3 million household loans, 100 million credit cards and 480,000 small-business loans. Bernanke took heat for substituting public for private credit, but it worked, because most of those private markets are functioning again. The emergency programs are all scheduled to wind down by June, and more than 80% of the loans have already been repaid, quietly returning billions of dollars in profits to taxpayers.
...
Bernanke says major financial crises generally cost nations 5% to 20% of their national output. This panic seems likely to cost the U.S. a fraction of 1%. "How much would you pay to avoid a second Depression?" he asks. "I mean, this is a pretty good return on investment."
Now that the fire is out, it's easy to attack the firefighters for getting the furniture wet or holding their hoses improperly. "The fire metaphor doesn't even do it. The Fed is more like the Pentagon," says Geithner. "It defends the freedom and security of Americans from existential threats ... This wasn't a war of choice. It was a war of necessity." And they won.
...
"I shudder to think what the world would be like if Ben hadn't been running the Fed," former Secretary Paulson says. "It's just hard to explain that yes, we're in deep doo-doo, but we would have been in much deeper doo-doo."
...
As the terrifying memories of free-falling markets fade, Bernanke has become a political victim of his apolitical success. His boldness in the crisis feels like yesterday's news. But if he's adopting a less aggressive approach to guiding a weak economy around skittish markets, it's not because he's timid, stupid or indifferent to Main Street. He's earned the benefit of the doubt. It's now up to our dysfunctional political system to let him do his job — and to fix the financial system so that he never has to save the world again.
Such wonderful supporters they are getting their quotes from. Geithner, Paulson, even Bernanke himself! Definitely some impartial parties to get unbiased opinions from. Puff piece to the max!
I also love how they say the loans are being paid back without going into HOW the loans are being paid back (HINT We're paying for that too! Thanks Ben/Tim/Obama!) Good thing those emergency programs are winding down and won't be inevitably be used for other things by Congress, oh wait.....
The fire may be out (for the mean time), but the foundation is sinking, the joists are rotten through and through and every day we get closer to foreclosure, let's say more great things about this guy, he's doing such great things to benefit you and me!
VRWC : Justice League : SDN Weight Watchers : BOTM : Former AYVB
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KrauserKrauser wrote:Geithner, Paulson, even Bernanke himself! Definitely some impartial parties to get unbiased opinions from. Puff piece to the max!
You could just see the love flowing between their circle of jerks.
All hail the Great Bernanke! He could even have helicopters make some money-a-throwing to celebrate his "award" by TIME.
That shitcock doesn't cost even 1/100th part of people like, say Norman Borlaug.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
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...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
