Time names Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke person of the year for 2009

"We've rarely had such a perfect revision of the cliché that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it," Time's Managing Editor Richard Stengel wrote in an editor's letter, noting Bernanke had once written that the Great Depression could have been avoided if the Fed hadn't taken some of the actions it did back in the 1930s.

"Bernanke didn't just learn from history; he wrote it himself and was damned if he was going to repeat it," wrote Stengel.

The 56-year-old Bernanke oversees the Fed, which controls the U.S. money supply and sets short-term interest rates, giving the central bank immense influence over inflation, unemployment and the strength of the dollar.

And, ever since global credit markets began imploding, the former Princeton University professor has "dramatically expanded those powers and reinvented the Fed," Time said.

Unlike typical Beltway power brokers, Bernanke's arguments are not ideological or partisan, but based in data and the latest academic literature, Time said.