Time announces Person of the Year

Ben Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, has been named this morning as Time magazine's Person of the Year.

Ben Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, has been named this morning as Time magazine's Person of the Year.

On Bernanke's role in steering his country through the financial crisis, the magazine credits him with deciding "to do the opposite of what the Fed did back in the thirties: he would loosen the money supply as far as it would go, he would save as many banks as he could, and he wasn't going to hector the American public about pulling up their socks," Time said.

Runners-up were General Stanley McChrystal, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt and tens of millions of Chinese workers "who have left their homes, and often their families, to find work in the factories of China's booming coastal cities" - resulting in the world's fastest-growing major economy.

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