25 people who'll affect your money this year

The economy is reeling, retirement accounts are shrinking, and joblessness is on the rise. Are the problems too big for politicians, CEOs or pundits to fix?

By U.S. News & World Report

Here's a list of "market movers" to watch in 2009. If things do improve, you'll know whom to credit. And if they don't, you'll know whom to blame.

1. Barack Obama. Tackling the economic mess is job one for the president, and then it's on to challenges in health care, climate change and financial re-regulation. It's a daunting list for the new commander-in- chief who famously said "the challenges we face are real . . . (and) they will be met."

2. Ben Bernanke. Now that the Federal Reserve chairman has slashed interest rates to almost zero and lent billions to the ailing banking sector, what comes next? The Fed chief will need to stay nimble as he and his central bank colleagues try to figure out how to deal with all those bad mortgage assets while supporting a Fed balance sheet that's ballooned to $2 trillion.

3. Lawrence Summers. He's a brilliant economist, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clinton era. Now, as head of the National Economic Council, Summers is a major force in sizing up the Obama administration' s stimulus package.

4. Timothy Geithner. The youthful Treasury secretary (he's 47) will be tasked with figuring out a plan to heal the banking sector. Geithner's time in the trenches during the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. (LEHMQ, news, msgs) gives him credibility in the finance world, even after it came to light that the country's most visible financial enforcer failed to pay some of his own taxes.

5. Jean-Claude Trichet. The president of the European Central Bank caught flak for increasing interest rates in mid-2008, but reversed course in response to the global downturn later in the year. Since then, he's proved surprisingly creative in dealing with the global spread of the banking crisis. Still, as lenders worldwide (and Europe, in particular) face mounting losses, Trichet's job is far from done.

6 Warren Buffett. The legendary investor took full advantage of market turmoil last fall, decrying the rise of "financial weapons of mass destruction" while making billion-dollar investments in beaten-down American companies, including Goldman Sachs Group (GS, news, msgs) and General Electric (GE, news, msgs). Buffett's investments didn't escape the market's decline in late 2008, but if there's any environment where a value-investing guru can prosper, it's this one.

7. William Gross. No other bond investor carries as much weight as Bill Gross, co-founder of the $800 billion bond giant Pacific Investment Management, or PIMCO. Risky bets placed on Fannie Mae (FNM, news, msgs), Freddie Mac (FRE, news, msgs) and other finance and mortgage-related securities late last year showed some daring. They'll play out this year. His latest advice for fixing the economy: "(T)he remedy for this deflationary delevering and minidepression is simple and almost axiomatic: Stop the decline in asset prices."

8. Lou Jiwei. As chairman of China Investment, the $200 billion state-run foreign investing arm, Jiwei suffered through bad bets on investments in American financial firms like Blackstone Group (BX, news, msgs) and Morgan Stanley (MS, news, msgs). Now, the technocrat is shying away from the U.S. banking sector, and raising stakes in institutions at home.

9. Barney Frank. As the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, the colorful and whip-smart Massachusetts Democrat will play a key role in the new Congress's efforts to resolve the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. He's also addressing the regulatory shortcomings that helped create it.

10. Sheila Bair. By arguing that the federal government should do more to modify troubled home loans -- and then introducing a program that would do so -- Bair, who heads the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., has emerged as a leading figure in the high-profile battle against foreclosures.

11. Kenneth Lewis. For now, the Bank of America (BAC, news, msgs) chief executive remains in charge of the consumer-banking giant. After losing face following unexpected losses from the $21 billion emergency acquisition of Merrill Lynch (MER, news, msgs), he's fighting to restore the bank's profitability –- and his own reputation.

12. Jamie Dimon. The JPMorgan Chase (JPM, news, msgs) head is either the smartest guy on Wall Street, or just the luckiest. He got the deal of the century by picking up Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, deals that make Morgan, by some measures, America's biggest bank. Now all he has to do is rebuild destroyed shareholder value at a time when a slow economy and tighter regulation could make banking a far less profit-friendly business.

13. Vikram Pandit. The beleaguered Citigroup (C, news, msgs) chief executive has a tough year ahead (if he manages to keep his job). The looming questions: What's to be done with a $306 billion portfolio of troubled mortgages and other assets? And will the bank weather mounting credit card losses and consumer defaults?

14. Jim Cramer. Love him or hate him, the former hedge-fund manager turned "Mad Money" host on CNBC still has a voice that out-booms all others when it comes to stock picking. Lately, his manic antics have included scathing attacks on asleep-at-the- switch regulators and tossing his hat into the ring for the job of chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

15. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. The billionaire Saudi investor has had a rocky go since his company, Kingdom Holding, went public on the Saudi stock exchange in 2007. A huge stake in Citigroup went south last year, sending Kingdom shares down 62%. Alwaleed's personal net worth slumped to an estimated $17 billion, down from $21 billion in 2007.

16. Eric Schmidt. The Google (GOOG, news, msgs) chief executive is forging ahead despite a wavering stock price on the strength of a 60%-plus market share in Internet searches and the accompanying highly profitable ads. He's also behind new moves into coming battles in the browser and smart-phone wars.

17. Meredith Whitney. Oppenheimer' s outspoken banking analyst has become the closest thing to a household name in the research world, thanks to gutsy but accurate forecasts of financial trauma. Her bearish calls made her one of the most prescient figures on Wall Street and influential enough to make blue chips tank and CEOs tremble.

18. Steve Jobs. It's hard to think of any company more tied to the personality of its leader than Apple (AAPL, news, msgs). It's not surprising, given Jobs' role as the architect behind runaway successes including the iPod, iTunes and the iPhone.

A swooning share price amid rumors regarding his future at the company shows Wall Street still believes Apple's fate rests on the man who made Mac.

19. Austan Goolsbee. The young star from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business is the cheerful face of centrist, market-friendly policies in the Obama administration. He's won over conservatives, including George Will, despite Goolsbee's criticisms of supply-side economics. His role as chief economist for the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board will include helping to fix the financial crisis while keeping up the administration' s pro-market, pro-trade credibility.

20. Rupert Murdoch. The billionaire chief of News Corp. (NWS, news, msgs) won the battle to buy The Wall Street Journal and oversees a sprawling global empire of media properties. How he'll fare during one of the worst advertising markets in history remains to be seen.

21. Nouriel Roubini. They call him "Dr. Doom." The New York University economist has the right to wear the title as a badge of honor. After correctly predicting the severity of the housing and credit crisis, he's a continually popular source for the latest version of what could still go very wrong in the economy.

22. Maria Bartiromo. As an anchor at CNBC and host of the nationally syndicated "Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo," she's become the first face of financial news during one of the worst downturns in history.

23. Neil Cavuto. The irascible Fox anchor has seen his profile rise as the financial crisis rages and the economy swoons. A familiar face on both the Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network, he's the network's unapologetic free-market voice at a time when defending capitalism has become a tougher sell.

24. Lawrence Kudlow. If Obama makes the case for higher taxes on the rich, you can bet the CNBC host will be taking the other side of that trade as a longtime banner-carrier for the tenets of Reagan's supply-side revolution.

25. Paul Krugman. He's arguably America's best-known living economist and winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in economics for his work in international trade. In his more public role as columnist with The New York Times, Krugman remains both an unapologetic partisan and a helpful demystifier of complex economics.

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