The news that Time magazine has named Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke Person of the Year today made me sick to my stomach. He should be named Fraud of the Year.

The Time article didn't get everything wrong. It says of Bernanke, "He just happens to be the most powerful nerd on the planet." That part is certainly true. However, most of the article was wrong, misleading, or both. For instance, it describes the Federal Reserve as, "an independent government agency that conducts monetary policy, which means it sets short-term interest rates." In fact, it is a privately owned agency, owned by its member banks who are shareholders in it. The government gets over 90% of the profits from it, but that fact doesn't make it a government agency. Take a look at any organizational chart of the federal government and you won't find the Fed listed as an agency anywhere on it.

The article also contains some heartstring tugging pathos. It quotes Bernanke as saying about the financial crisis, "I'm not one of those people who look at this as some kind of video game. I come from Main Street, from a small town that's really depressed. This is all very real to me." How touching, and what a great way to distract attention from the fact that Bernanke is the leading advocate of legalized fraud (see my novel, available as a free download on this site, or some of my other blog entries for details about legalized fraud).

So why did Bernanke win the magazine's nod this year? "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." So, in their view, we should thank Bernanke for being an accessory to the biggest con job since the Fed's creation in 1913, the bailout of the financial industry,

It will be interesting to see how Bernanke's star falls in 2010 and 2011 as the economy faces yet another round of crisis when the Option ARM and Alt-A mortgage resets start to rise and peak, just as the sub-prime resets rose and peaked in 2007 and 2008. I doubt that Time will be as laudatory toward Bernanke in two years.