Boy did Time Magazine show its true American-East-Coast-Upper-Class-centric myopia in naming Ben Bernanke Man of the Year. Ben’s election reminds me of those stories you read every once in a while about an upstate New York fireman, looking to be a hero, who rescues a house from the flames…only to find out later that he set the fire himself so he could be the first on the scene.

"Not that brave"
Ben, an establishment scion, failed to see the embers of fiscal destruction, then assured us, “It appears the sub-prime problems are contained,” that they aren’t that worrisome. Then, when all went wrong and reality collapsed upon him, he threw money to the same debt and collateralization arsonists who started the blaze in the first place. Seriously, I could have given Goldman, City, AIG and GMAC all the cash and credit they needed on absurdly easy terms just as well as he did in his total panic (read Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail).

If you are going to make a fiscal shenanigan player Man of the Year, it should have been John Paulson as depicted in the book, The Greatest Trade Ever. He made billions by seeing through the leverage idiocy and spent 2009 enjoying himself by having the last laugh at the fools he took advantage of…..including Bernanke and you and me.

Here at Java Jag, we nominate a different Man of the Year. It’s the Iranian students, brave men and women who refused to be brainwashed by a sick, corrupt regime. They took to the streets in defiance of a vengeful, brutal government, and paying the price. Contesting a fraudulent election, they were at first dismissed, then lied to, beaten, gassed, jailed, raped and sodomized, and now acknowledged to have been murdered. In spite of this, they continue to actively protest in person and on the web. At every turn they have to outsmart a North Korean style government determined to crush the truth and all dissent everywhere. It’s a regime that jams the internet and brings on goons and thugs who wield chains and clubs to maim their brothers and sisters.

"Our Man of the Year"
The Iranian students have been sold out by everyone everywhere: Russia, China, Venezuela and even Islamic Turkey have all ignored their pleas and have cozied up to their jailers. European students from Brittan to Greece, always eager to march on behalf of the Palestinians, seem cowardly in their silence.

These Iranian students are staring down a really ugly theocracy. The least we can do is get out of our self-centric skins and recognize true Man of the Year qualities when they appear.