The nominees are:
Incoming Japanese PM Shinzo Abe
He based the LDP’s election campaign around looser BOJ monetary policy and faster deficit spending. He will also appoint a new BOJ governor next April, one who will no doubt be more aggressive than outgoing governor Shirakowa.
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke
Bernanke is a perennial Man of the Year candidate as his willingness to employ unorthodox methods of injecting cash into the global economy impacts everything from stock and bond prices to the prices of raw materials in Brazil. When Ben speaks, markets move.
ECB President Mario Draghi
Draghi uttered the single most powerful phrase in the history of the euro zone when he declared that the ECB is “ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me it will be enough.” Since that day, July 27, EUR/USD has rallied over 10 cents and European stock and bond markets have soared. Draghi did not solve the problem but he bought Europe a great deal of time to get its act together. He has since backed his pledge by introducing OMT, a bond-buying program with “no ex ante quantitative limits are set on the size of Outright Monetary Transactions”. While it has yet to be deployed, it is a powerful bazooka that is locked and loaded.
And the winner is:
Draghi. In the end, it was no contest. Draghi went all in at the end of July and single-handedly took the notion of a catastrophic collapse of the euro zone, so called “redenomination risk”, out of the equation.
