Foreign Policy magazine says Ben Bernanke is the globe’s number one thinker for 2009.  “His key insight?  The need for massive, damn-the-torpedoes intervention in financial markets.”  It’s the kind of bold judgment Foreign Policy likes to issue.   But it’s also premature, and it keeps everyone’s eye on the fate of the biggest banks instead of the people who create real value through productive work.

Bernanke’s efforts (along with those of a few other people at Treasury, in Congress, and a couple hundred million taxpayers) may have pulled America out of its recession and pulled the world back from the brink of a global depression.  There are doubters, however, who talk about a possible new crises, arising from debt problems in economies like Dubai’s or the UK’s, from commercial real estate, or from a still-unregulated Wall Street.

It’s confidence that ultimately buoys any economy, and people’s lack of confidence in their own futures might bring our present gradual improvement to a screeching halt. While consumer confidence seems to have stabilized, Americans are clearly feeling less sure about the overall strength of the American economy and its place in the world.  James Fallows notes a Pew poll showing that most Americans see China as the world’s leading economic power, a reflection not of facts (it’s third after Japan and just ahead of Germany) but of what Americans see as an alarming trend line.

That trend line depends on how people feel about their shot at prosperity where they live.  In his last major policy speech, Ben Bernanke closed with a pessimistic view of the economy’s ability to add jobs.  Right now, millions of Americans are out of work while the economies of China and India are surging.   The policies which emerged from Ben Bernanke’s Fed and Henry Paulson’s Treasury at the end of the Bush Administration didn’t pay much attention to the people at the bottom who create value by working for an honest dollar.  If Bernanke’s award-winning brain can help America turn the corner towards rewarding jobs that drive economic growth, he might break the confidence logjam that is really holding the country back today.   That would be thinking globally and acting locally.

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