Janet Yellen: Nominee Currently: Steve Mnuchin
The Biden administration is expected to prioritize a massive stimulus package to shore up the economy’s shaky recovery. Biden also campaigned on tax increases for businesses and some of the wealthiest Americans — issues that the next secretary will have to pursue.
Janet Yellen
Former chair of the Federal Reserve
Yellen has served as chair of the Federal Reserve, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and as a top economic adviser to President Bill Clinton. She was the first female chair of the Fed, serving from 2014 to 2018. Her term as chair was marked by lowering unemployment, record highs in the stock market and low inflation. Despite this, she was the first Fed chair not to be reappointed after serving a first full term. If approved, she would be the first female Treasury secretary.
Source: Washington Post Reported by Jeff Stein and Kate Rabinowitz.
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2021-01-19 Janet Yellen says Biden must ‘act big’ with coronavirus relief package
2021-01-19 Five key takeaways from Janet Yellen’s Treasury confirmation hearing Janet Yellen’s journey to become the first female Treasury secretary in U.S. history moved smoothly through a critical Senate hearing Tuesday, with a vote on her confirmation likely to happen before the end of the week.
Yellen characterized President-elect Joe Biden being in favor of some tax increases on wealthy Americans and corporations to fund an ambitious domestic agenda that includes pulling the country through the coronavirus pandemic and, eventually, avoiding the “race to the bottom” among global economies when it comes to corporate taxes.
Yellen said there will come a time to talk about debt and deficits, but not until the economy has recovered from the pandemic. The U.S. is currently carrying a $27.7 trillion debt load after ending fiscal 2020 with a more than $3.1 trillion budget deficit. “The Treasury secretary has to be a voice for fiscal sanity.
Yellen said the new administration will remain focused on getting China to change its ways, though Biden likely will eschew the type of unilateral techniques that Trump employed, preferring instead to “work with our allies” in the effort.
Yellen said the incoming regime wants a stable currency whose price should be determined by market forces. “The United States does not seek a weaker currency to gain competitive advantage, and we should oppose attempts by other countries to do so,” she said. “The intentional targeting of exchange rates to gain commercial advantage is unacceptable.”
Likely the first item on Yellen’s to-do list will be guiding the administration through another round of spending aimed at those impacted by the pandemic.
Biden last week proposed a $1.9 trillion plan that likely will get pared down but still will launch the third major fiscal volley at helping the U.S. through until the health-care system can get vaccines widely enough distributed to achieve herd immunity.
2021-01-18 AS FED CHAIR, JANET YELLEN DISCOUNTED ECONOMIC DESPERATION. THE PANDEMIC WILL LIKELY FORCE A DIFFERENT APPROACH. Her recent statements, however, suggest that the pandemic, along with the run of wage growth and unemployment decline after 2017 many economists thought wasn’t possible, has altered her thinking, and she now believes in aggressive action by the Fed and Treasury to continue to lift up the economy. In October, Yellen said, “While the pandemic is still seriously affecting the economy, we need to continue extraordinary fiscal support. … We need support for the economy from both monetary and fiscal policy.” Which direction she chooses — austerity or stimulus, deficits or employment — will have enormous import for this deeply divided country.
2021-01-10 Why Yellen’s Wall Street windfall is getting a pass – POLITICO The former Fed chair’s past comments help explain why many Democrats are confident she won’t be beholden to financial interests.
Yellen, whose financial disclosures show that she earned a total of $7 million in fees over the past two years, voiced worry about insufficient oversight of large firms that serve as hubs of lending or investment. She says regulators should particularly consider reining in hedge funds and other firms that have escaped heightened scrutiny since the 2008 credit crisis, including in the landmark Dodd-Frank law, which largely focused on big banks.
In June 2020, she argued that Congress had left gaping holes in supervising the activities of “shadow banks” — a term that refers to everything from asset managers and insurers to private equity firms. Those gaps meant that the Federal Reserve had to step in at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic to prevent debt markets from breaking down as panicky investors in mutual funds and other firms pulled money out.
“There really are problems here in the powers created by Dodd-Frank, and we’ve seen it all blow up except for the Fed intervention that saved us from a financial crisis,” she said at an event hosted by the Brookings Institution, where she is a distinguished fellow. “I personally think we need a new Dodd-Frank.”
2021-01-04 Janet Yellen made millions giving speeches to Wall Street banks she’ll soon regulate
2020-12-23 Why Janet Yellen makes so much sense as Treasury secretary
2020-12-11 A Letter From 9 Million U.S. Expats to Janet Yellen There are simple tweaks you could make that would cost the U.S. nothing in lost revenue, save you a packet in enforcement expense and make our lives easier. The options are laid out in an essay I commend to everyone on your staff: “A Simple Regulatory Fix for Citizenship Taxation,” by John Richardson, Karen Alpert and Laura Snyder.
This change would align American taxation of individuals with the systems of all other developed countries. It would free us expats to live, earn, save and invest as other people do. And whenever any of us move back to the U.S., we’re yours again. Never would it have cost so little to help so many with such negligible fuss. Please consider it.
2020-12-02 ‘Centrist’ Janet Yellen supports a $2 trillion carbon tax
2015-09-14 Meet Janet Yellen: The most powerful woman in the world Yet few Americans have actually heard of her — about 70% of the U.S. population doesn’t know who Yellen is, according to a NBC/WSJ poll from March.
As leader of America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, Yellen has immense influence over global financial markets and the U.S. economy. Trillions of dollars can be lost or gained based on how investors interpret each word that comes out of Yellen’s mouth. But volatile financial markets are the last thing Yellen wants. In fact, she often speaks in a monotone voice about Fed policy, attempting to avoid words or intonation that might rattle investors.
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