TIME Names Bernanke (Wall Street's) Person of the Year

This morning, my RSS feeds were alight with the news that Ben Bernanke has been named TIME's Person of the Year for 2009.

Despite my own lack of enthrallment with the Federal Reserve chairman, the magazine isn't completely off-track when it writes:

But the main reason Ben Shalom Bernanke is TIME's Person of the Year for 2009 is that he is the most important player guiding the world's most important economy. 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. The decisions he has made, and those he has yet to make, will shape the path of our prosperity, the direction of our politics and our relationship to the world.

Indeed, the decisions Bernanke has made are likely to affect us for years to come. But the difference is I'm on the side of those who add the caveat that Bernanke's "creative" tenure as Reserve Chairman will negatively affect regular Americans' economic futures.