People Who Mattered

By Norman Pearlstine

Alan Greenspan

If you believe that the booming American economy is the story of the 1990s, then Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan gets my vote as Person of the Decade. The American economy will mark its longest period of uninterrupted expansion this February. During the past nine years, the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen to 4.1%, the lowest level in three decades, while inflation has remained under 3% and interest rates have remained relatively low. The stock market remains at record levels, and productivity grew twice as fast in the 1990s as it did in the 1980s. No one person, of course, can claim credit for this performance, but over the past dozen years, Greenspan's quiet confidence and masterly control of the nation's money supply have done much to convince consumers and Congress that the investment-driven economic growth is real. Although Chairman Greenspan will be 74 when his third term expires next June, the job remains his for the asking. As presidential contender John McCain suggested earlier this month, the one sure way to continue America's economic prosperity is to have Greenspan stay on, whether he is alive or dead. "If Mr. Greenspan should happen to die, God forbid... I would prop him up and put a pair of dark glasses on him."

--Norman Pearlstine

Madeleine Albright

The echoes of her past could be heard in every statement of uncompromising purpose, each insistence that her war was just. In her third year as the country's first female Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, a child of Europe's dark century, pushed and prodded the U.S. and its allies to punish the Continent's latest ethnic cleanser. It was a career-defining event: the NATO campaign to drive Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's forces out of Kosovo became known as Madeleine's War. Through 78 days of bombing, Albright kept wavering allies on board, until Milosevic finally backed down. There were no U.S. combat deaths. NATO jets failed to stop Serbs from killing 10,000 Kosovars and driving an additional 700,000 out of the province, but Albright declared victory--and the refugees returned. At a time of disquiet about U.S. interventions in the world, Albright evoked an earlier moment in the American Century, when the U.S. did not shrink from sending its soldiers abroad to right wrongs and battle tyrants. "We're getting used to the idea," she told TIME, "that there are different ways of exerting American force."

Tiger Woods

The talent is so immense, the expectation so outsize, that it has often seemed easy to accuse Tiger Woods of underachievement. But in 1999 Woods buried those charges in a sand trap. After months of honing his swing, Woods went on a rampage the likes of which had not been seen in four decades. He won eight tournaments, including the PGA and Tour championships; during one stretch he won four consecutive starts, becoming the first player to do so since Ben Hogan in 1953. In September he helped propel the U.S. to a dramatic victory in the Ryder Cup. For the year Woods earned more than $6.6 million--$1 million more than Jack Nicklaus made in his entire PGA Tour career--and cemented his status as the world's most marketable athlete. The son of an African-American father and a Thai mother, he remained the most visible symbol of America's multihued society. Through it all, he showed a newfound maturity, the quiet assurance of a performer in full command of his abilities. "It's just going to get better," he said. "I'm not that old. I'm not over the hill yet." At 23, Tiger hasn't even finished his ascent.

Jiang Zemin

His is the most delicate--and harrowing--balancing act on earth. Jiang Zemin finished the year with one monumental triumph: by cutting a deal with the U.S. to secure membership for China in the World Trade Organization, he opened his country's markets to a flood of foreign goods and investment. And yet the WTO agreement--like Jiang's imperial affectations at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Maoist revolution--only masked his dilemmas. While he steered China into the global economy, Jiang remained at odds with the West on issues ranging from Kosovo to Taiwan. Inside his borders Jiang awkwardly tried to silence members of Falun Gong, the banned meditation cult. The world waits to see how well Jiang can maneuver on the high wire.

Queen Noor

She never left the king's side during his final days, accompanying him on the plane from the Mayo Clinic back to Amman and keeping vigil at his bed as he lay dying. She remained there even at his funeral, shrouding herself from view so as not to defy Islamic custom. In the hours after King Hussein's death, she comforted hundreds of distraught countrywomen, and won the affection of her adopted nation. It came amid rumors that the Queen had tried to engineer the ascension of her 18-year-old son Hamzah over that of the King's brother Hassan. Abdullah, the King's eldest son from his first marriage, eventually climbed the throne, but the Queen saw Hamzah named crown prince. And the former Lisa Halaby retained her royal title, still the picture of lightly worn radiance and grace.

J.K. Rowling

The idea came to the aspiring author in 1990 during a train ride from Manchester to London. It involved a young orphan who discovers he is a wizard, then is whisked away from his cruel aunt and uncle to be schooled in the use of his magical powers. This year that inspiration produced a publishing wonder: three novels about Harry Potter that keep crowding the top three spots on the fiction best-seller lists. Movie directors with the pick of projects are jostling for the right to bring Harry to the screen. J.K. Rowling, who lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, has four more Harry Potters planned. Her readers, young and old, are clearing more bookshelf space now.

Steve Jobs

As a hotheaded youth he became the living icon of the PC revolution. Then came a flameout that was equally spectacular. But Steve Jobs' third act has been the most stunning of all. This fall the Pixar chairman and interim-ad-infinitum CEO of Apple smacked a bases-clearing double: Pixar's Toy Story 2 broke Thanksgiving box-office records, garnering $81 million in five days, while Apple unveiled the iBook and reborn iMac. Jobs seems to have acquired a Midas touch. Apple's stock gained nearly 200% this year, and Pixar is now tweaking the storyboards for its next film, Monsters, Inc. Calmer and wiser, Jobs is getting people to think different once again.

Joel Klein and Bill Gates

Antitrust division chiefs are an obscure lot, toiling anonymously over fusty treatises and recondite appellate briefs. But with his epic lawsuit against the software empire Microsoft this year, Joel Klein stepped into the floodlights, part trust-busting Ida Tarbell, part Goliath-slaying David. Microsoft's fate remains in the air, but Klein has already changed corporate history: no other company will ever write e-mail so recklessly or save it so efficiently. Gates, the other gladiator in this legal coliseum, has long been a household name. But the antitrust lawsuit--and the media frenzy it generated--has cast him in a new light and set off a national debate: Is the world's richest man a national treasure or an $85 billion bully? Log on to a chat room and take a side.