Bob McCarty Writes

The issue of TIME scheduled to hit newsstands Friday is described in a news release today as the “most anticipated issue of the year.”  Why?  Because it features Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on the cover as the magazine’s “2009 Person of the Year.”

Come again?

Why on earth would the folks at TIME select Bernanke — a man described in the magazine’s already-published online version of their story as a “bald man with a gray beard and tired eyes” — as their “Person of the Year”?

I suspect it’s because they’re in the tank for everything related to President Barack Obama and the people he’s charged with righting the nation’s economy — or, at a minimum, pretending to be focused on that goal.

This is not Bernanke’s first appearance at or near the top of a liberal’s list of powerful and/or influential people.

In November 2006, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich placed the 56-year-old fourth on his short list of “most powerful Americans over the next 18 months.”  Pardon me, but I couldn’t resist using the term “short list” to describe Reich’s offering and using the “View Full Size” image (right) of Reich.

Likewise, this is not Bernanke’s first appearance on this blog.

In March, I shared the following observations in a post about the Fed chairman:

Ben Bernanke earned the nickname “Helicopter Ben” for comments he made in a November 2002 speech, Deflation: Making Sure “It” Doesn’t Happen Here, delivered at the National Economists Club in Washington, D.C.  More than six years later, some are wont to apply a new nickname, “Banana Ben,” to the Federal Reserve chairman.

He has earned the new name, writes Michael Pento at his FXStreet.com, because of his desire to make the United States resemble a banana republic instead of embracing the policies that made the U.S. the greatest nation on earth.

It is now abundantly clear to all that not only the Fed Chairman but also this administration will do everything in their power to create inflation, he continues. Their efforts are derived from the mistaken belief that inflation can solve everything.

Most important among Pento’s observations, however, are those that appear below, aimed at President Barack Obama:

Further, what might surprise the new President—allegedly a champion of the poor—is that an increased supply of money is never evenly distributed throughout the economy; it always finds a home with the nation’s most wealthy citizens who have access to credit first. Skyrocketing prices relegate the middle and lower classes to use all their available funds for the basic necessities of life. Since the demand for discretionary purchases collapses, unemployment rates explode and the economy is left in shambles.

Now, I’ll end this post the same way I ended the one in March:  Welcome to the “Land of ‘Hope and Change.’”

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