Courtesy of Time.

Courtesy of Time.

He may be "the most powerful nerd on the planet," Time says, but Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is also its "person of the year" because of the actions he and his fellow policy makers at the central bank took to avert an even worse economic disaster.

The magazine just announced the news.

According to Time:

The economy would be much, much worse if the Fed had not taken ... extreme measures to stop the panic. There's a vast difference between 10% and 25% unemployment, between anemic and negative growth. (Bernanke) wishes Americans understood that he helped save the irresponsible giants of Wall Street only to protect ordinary folks on Main Street. He knows better than anyone how financial crises spiral into global disasters, how the grass gets crushed when elephants fall. "We came very, very close to a depression ... The markets were in anaphylactic shock," he told Time during one of three extended interviews. "I'm not happy with where we are, but it's a lot better than where we could be."

On Monday, we asked Two-Way readers who they thought the person of the year should be. "Iran protesters" was by far the top choice in that unscientific query.

Last year's Time person of the year was then president-elect Barack Obama.