The Short Story of Janet Louise Yellen

 

"President Barack Obama nominated Janet Louise Yellon on Oct. 9, 2013, to become the chair of the Federal Reserve Board. She succeeded Ben Bernanke and was scheduled to remain a board member until 2024. 

 

Her first term began Feb. 1, 2014, and was slated to end four years later in February 2018. In November 2017, President Donald Trump decided against offering her a second term and nominated Jerome Powell to replae her. Her support for financial regulations possibly hurt her chances of securing a second term. 

 

On Nov. 20, 2017, Yellen announced her resignation from the federal Reserve Board as soon as Jerome Powell was sworn in. She was the first chair in nearly 40 years to not receive a second term.

 

Janet Yellen was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Brooklyn, N.Y. on Aug. 13, 1946. Her mother was a teacher and her father was a doctor, and she eventually became editor of the Fort Hamilton High School newspaper, from which she graduated as valedictorian. She graduated summa cum laude with an economics degree from Brown University in 1967 and went on to receive her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1971. She then worked as a professor at several prestigious universities, including Harvard, The London School of Economics and the University of California at Berkeley.

 

Like her predecessor, Yellen was a staunch dove. Much of the research she performed as an academic economist focused on employment. She and her husband, George Akerlof, are both keynesian economists who believe that economic markets are fundamentally flawed and need governmental regulation to function correctly. They both created economic models showing how firms seeking to maximize profits would pay higher than minimum wages. This model was a rebuttal to conservatives such as Robert Lucas, who mandated that flexible wages and prices would allow the economy to revert to form more easily after market upheavals. These models helped to form the foundation of the New Keynesian philosophy."  (Source:  Investopedia, Janet Yellen : Background And Philosophy by Mark P. Cussen Nov 23, 2020)