时代周刊封面文章收藏（每周更新，2009-12-28）.pdf

A bald man with a gray beard and tired eyes is sitting in his oversize Washington office, talking about the economy. He doesnt have a commanding presence. He isnt 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 arent partisan or ideological; theyre methodical, grounded in data and the latest academic literature. When he doesnt know something, he doesnt bluster or bluff. Hes 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. Hes shy. He doesnt 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. 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