5. Ben Bernanke
for owning the U.S. economy, no matter what it takes.
Chairman, Federal Reserve | Washington
Last year's No. 1 FP Global Thinker might not have dreamed that 2010 could possibly be tougher than 2009. But even after the passage of historic financial regulatory reforms in July that gave the Fed unprecedented power, not to mention his work over the past two years steering the U.S. economy through its worst downturn since the Great Depression, Ben Bernanke still found himself taking shots from lawmakers and pundits alike. An upswing of populist anger, fury over politically difficult moves like the 2009 AIG bailout, and the interminable beat of bad job numbers have kept the Fed chairman in the foxhole.
But he has not given up. This year, he has raised the Fed's balance sheet to a cool $2.3 trillion (from $850 billion before the crisis), shooting tens of billions of that over to the Treasury to help close the deficit, and pursued the controversial idea of quantitative easing, a high-powered stimulant. The morning after the Republican gains in the midterm elections suggested Congress would be gridlocked for years to come, he took the aggressive, risky step of announcing that the Fed would pump an additional $600 billion into the financial system by 2011, raising the bank's holdings to nearly $3 trillion and, ideally, lowering mortgage prices and the unemployment rate in a way the rest of the government may no longer have the tools to do. Although Bernanke recently admitted that "central bankers alone cannot solve the world's economic problems," his bold moves leave no doubt about who's in charge.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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