US President-elect Joe Biden will choose Janet Yellen as his Treasury Secretary and top cabinet official in the American economy, as it faces a laborious recovery from the shock of the coronavirus epidemic.
Mrs. Yellen, 744, as president of the Federal Reserve, president of the San Francisco Fed and president of the White House Council, will likely secure her status as the top U.S. policymaker of her generation under Bill Clinton, an economic adviser.
Mrs. Yellen recently stepped forward before Fed Governor Leal Brennard, as Mr. Biden made an announcement expected in the coming days as a leading candidate to lead the Treasury Department, according to people familiar with the matter.
He declined to comment through a spokesman for the Brookings Institution.
Other candidates for the job included former Deputy Treasury Secretary Sarah Bloom Raskin; Roger Ferguson, chief executive of the Teachers Insurance and Anniversary Association; And Rafael Bostick, president of the Atlanta Fed. The Beadon Transition team declined to comment.
She was confirmed by the Senate that Mrs. Yellen would be the first woman to serve as Treasury Secretary in the organization’s 231-year history. He will take over from Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Munchin, urging Mr. Biden to keep financial markets stable, saying billions of dollars were at risk of a U.S. recovery with new stimulus.
These efforts are likely to involve tougher negotiations with Capitol Hill, Republican resistance to large-scale spending increases and closer ties with Fed Chairman J. Powell, especially since Mr. Munchin recently removed the opportunity to provide several emergency facilities centrally to banks that were critical to his crisis response.
Mr. Biden’s move to select Ames Yellen for the Treasury role will give the author of American economics a firm hand and a well-known figure, but his nomination also reflects the party’s desire to meet demand from the moderate and progressive branches of the Democratic Party.
As the strategy for top Treasury positions intensified in recent weeks, Mrs. Yellen was seen as enough to the left of Ames Brennard and Mr. Ferguson to appease liberals, but not as progressive as Ms. Raskin.
Mrs. Yellen is a resident of New York City, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Brown University and then a doctorate from Yale University where she was taught by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
As well as his time at the White House, he played various senior roles at the Fed, taking over the post in early 2014, before being nominated by then-President Barack Obama for president of the US Federal Reserve in late 2013.
Sri Lanka led the Yellen Fed to a stronger cycle as the central bank sought to normalize its monetary policy in the aftermath of the recovery from the financial crisis.
He would have been considered one of the weakest monetary policymakers, but his watchdog found interest rates to be too high after the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates, which saw unemployment fall to much lower levels before inflation could be transmitted.
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