If confirmed by the Senate, she could be the primary girl to carry the place in the US historical past.
The 74-year-old economist beforehand served as head of America’s central financial institution and as a prime economics adviser to former President Invoice Clinton.
She is credited with serving to steer the financial restoration after the 2007 monetary disaster and ensuing recession.
As chair of the US Federal Reserve, Ms. Yellen was identified for focusing extra consideration on the effect of the financial institution’s insurance policies on staff and the prices of America’s rising inequality.
Donald Trump bucked Washington custom when he opted not to appoint Ms. Yellen to a second four-year time period on the Fed. Beginning with Invoice Clinton within the 1990s, presidents saved on financial institution leaders set by their predecessors to de-politicize the financial institution.
Since leaving the financial institution in 2018, Ms. Yellen has spoken out about local weather change and the necessity for Washington to do extra to protect the US economic system from the effect of the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. Trump handed over Ms. Yellen for a second Fed period, reportedly partially because he thought her roughly 5 foot top made her too quick for the job.
Who’s Janet Yellen?
The daughter of a household physician and an elementary faculty instructor grew up in New York Metropolis. She earned her diploma in economics from Brown College, earlier than finishing a Ph.D. at Yale.
Along with her work on the Fed and in authorities, she was a professor at the College of California, Berkeley.
She is married to George Akerlof, a Nobel Prize-winning economist whom she met whereas working as a researcher on the Fed within the 1970s. They’ve one son, who can be an economics professor.
Profile: Janet Yellen
Her climb to the highest of the economics career additionally made her a feminist icon within the economics world.
When she left the Fed in 2018, many paid tribute to her management by imitating a blazer’s signature look with a popped collar.
Ms. Yellen has an extended historical past of working in Washington. Earlier than Mr. Obama named her to steer the Fed in 2014, she had served as certainly one of its board members for a decade, together with four years as vice-chair.
On the Treasury, she would probably be charged with guiding the Biden administration’s financial response to the pandemic, which has prompted the worst economic contraction the US has seen in a long time and dependable greater than 10 million individuals out of labor.
The workplace additionally oversees tax coverage, public debt, and worldwide finance and sanctions.
Ms. Yellen is seen as a choice capable of fulfilling each progressive and centrist members of Mr. Biden’s Democratic occasion. Her nomination to steer the Fed in 2014 gained help from some Republicans.
“2 cheers for Janet Yellen at Treasury,” liberal public coverage professor and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote on Twitter.
Whereas she isn’t as left-wing as a few of the names rumored to be into consideration, comparable to Senator Elizabeth Warren, she nonetheless “understands the massive toll stagnant wages, systemic racism, and widening inequality have taken on our economic system and society,” he stated.
Ms. Warren additionally chimed in her congratulations, specializing in Ms. Yellen’s document as a financial institution regulator. Indeed, one of her last strikes as Fed chair was issuing an order limiting Wells Fargo’s potential to develop in response to a pretend accounts scandal on the financial institution.
“Janet Yellen could be an impressive selection for Treasury Secretary,” Ms. Warren stated. “She is wise, robust, and principled.”
Ms. Yellen’s deal with employment, relatively than inflation, gave her popularity favoring low rates of interest, which spur financial exercise by making it cheaper to borrow cash.
However, underneath her management, the Fed raised interest rates for the primary time since 2008 – albeit much less aggressively than some extra conservative commentators supported.
Her stewardship of that course has gained reward on Wall Avenue, even because it stays hotly debated.
On Monday, Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs govt and financial advisor to Donald Trump, stated Mr. Biden had made a “wonderful selection.”
“Having had the chance to work with then-Chair Yellen, I’ve little question she would be the steady hand we have to promote an economic system that works for everybody, particularly throughout these troublesome instances. Congratulations,” he wrote on Twitter.
