Montana Maven's
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Today We the People and Taxpayers were robbed of Time’s "Person ofthe Year". We, who saved America by saving the banks, got gypped. Wewho saved Chrysler and GM got kicked to the side of the road. InsteadBen Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman was given that honor.

Today fairleft has a diary on what Senator Jeff Merkley says is hisreasons for NOT voting to reappoint Bernanke to another term asChairman of the Federal Reserve and the diary also has some choicequotes by the economist Dean Baker on why we have fallen further downthe rabbit hole in having somebody who doesn’t seem to know what hisjob description is being lauded by Time Magazine.Only One Democrat Says No to Bernanke

Dean Baker goes after NPR’s Morning Edition for ridiculing Senator Jim Bunning and his criticism of Bernanke:

It would be difficult to imagine howsomeone could fail more completely in their job than Bernanke did. Yet,NPR thinks it is ridiculous to question whether Bernanke should bereappointed. This is an excellent display of the different standards ofaccountability in Washington and the world where most people live andwork.

And Bob Borasage: Senators Throw Cold Water on Bernanke…

Appearing at a press conference withSanders, Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign forAmerica’s Future, said: ”Awarding Ben Bernanke man of the year as Timemagazine has done is something like celebrating an arsonist for helpingput out the fire that they just put a match to.”

Now granted "Time" is and always has been the establishment’smagazine. And granted the award is given to the person or persons whomost influenced events of the world. Some have influenced for thebetter, and some for worse like Hitler (1936) and Stalin (1939, 1942).So they could have picked Chief Ben Prints a Bunch of Bills for thepaving of the way for the coming disaster when the next bubble hedidn’t see bursts and blows up the planet. But that’s not why theypicked him. They picked him because they think he saved the planet.Time’s managing editor Richard Stengel announced the pick and explainedit on this morning’s "Today Show".

"He was the great scholar of theDepression, and he saw what looked like another depression coming andhe decided he would do whatever it takes to forestall that," Stengelsaid. "And I think he did. It could have been a lot worse; there werethings he could have done better. One of his responsibilities is to putfull employment in society and he hasn’t really stepped up on that. Butin terms of influence and how the economy went this year, Bernanke wasthe guy."

"Time" Names Bernanke

Paul Krugman (who has been a supporter of Bernanke) among manyothers has been very concerned about the unemployed numbers even ifBernanke hasn’t. As late as last Friday Krugman wrote about his concernabout Bernanke’s cavalier and probably wrong attitude towardsunemployment.

Bernanke’s Unfinished Mission

Mr. Bernanke has received a great dealof credit, and rightly so, for his use of unorthodox strategies tocontain the damage after Lehman Brothers failed. But both the Fed’sactions, as measured by its expansion of credit, and Mr. Bernanke’swords suggest that the urgency of late 2008 and early 2009 has givenway to a curious mix of complacency and fatalism — a sense that the Fedhas done enough now that the financial system has stepped back from thebrink, even though its own forecasts predict that unemployment willremain punishingly high for at least the next three years.

"Complacency and fatalism" are two very appropriate words for thisFed Chairman who seems to be led around by the nose by the LloydBlankfeins and Timothy Geithners and, of course, Larry Summers.
"Complacency" as far as unemployment is concerned is echoed by Stengelwhen he admits that Bernanke "hasn’t really stepped up on that". "Yeh,that umemployment deal is a bit troublesome,", he seems to be saying,"but whatever. It’s just so super cool that Wall Street is back andchugging along and everybody I know is really happy".

Merkeley, Baker and others have pointed out that Bernanke didn’teven mention his duty to keep unemployment down in his confirmationhearings.

Do we all get it? There are culprits like the traders at Goldmans,AIG, Lehmanns, and other Wall Street firms. But there are also peoplelike Bernanke and Greenspan before him and now the folks at Time. Allof them remind me of Daisy and Tom Buchanan from "The Great Gatsby"."They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things andcreatures and then retreated back into their money of their vastcarelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let otherpeople clean up the mess they had made.

We are the other people trying to clean up the mess these so-calledexperts and elites have made. The American taxpayer has come to therescue of the world. And right now the average American taxpayer ishurting and scared. Oh and, by the way, unemployment numbers" aren’tnumbers. They are people. Real live human beings.

The least they could have done was given us the f**king cover of Time.