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Time magazine’s managing editor Richard Stengel was on the “Today” show this morning to (finally) announce the magazine’s Person of the Year: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

The Person of the Year issue, due on newsstands on Friday, features the first full, on-the-record print interview with Bernanke since he was named chairman of the Fed. Said Stengel of the cover and cover story: “It’s a throwback cover. It’s like a Person of the Year cover from the 1940′s or 50′s. It’s a great, great story by our senior correspondent Michael Grunwald. And it’s basically about who is influencing how the economy operates.”

Adds Grunwald in the magazine:

“The main reason Ben Shalom Bernanke is Time‘s Person of the Year for 2009 is that he is the most important player guiding the world’s most important economy. His creative leadership helped ensure that 2009 was a period of weak recovery rather than catastrophic depression, and he still wields unrivaled power over our money, our jobs, our savings and our national future.”

The Person of the Year package also includes interviews with the Person of the Year runners-up: Nancy Pelosi, General Stanley McChrystal, Usain Bolt and “the Chinese worker,” — represented by five factory workers in China.

Read more: Person of the Year 2009 –Time

Previously: Gearing Up For Time‘s Person Of The Year Announcement