Janet Yellen: An economic dove in Joe Biden’s cabinet

January 20, 2021 will see the first woman sit as the head of the Department of the Treasury, the central bank and the White House Council of Economic Advisers–  the three most powerful economic positions in the United States. Janet Yellen, described by former President Barack Obama as ‘one of the nation’s foremost economists and policy makers’, will assume office when millions of Americans are out of jobs and a pandemic is still haunting the country.

Coming from a middle-class household Yellen spent most of her childhood in Bay Ridge. Her mother– a teacher by profession– had decided to stay at home to raise a young Janet. Meanwhile, he father earned the bread being a family doctor. Yellen was both valedictorian and editor of the newspaper at her highschool before she went on to receive a doctorate from the Yale University. In an interview in 2013 with Simon Bowmaker, an economics professor at New York University, Ms. Yellen explained her rationale for becoming an economist, saying she had always liked the rigor of math but economics offered something more.

“I care about people. I discovered that economics was of enormous relevance to our lives and had the potential to make the world a better place,” Yellen said according to The New York Times when asked the reason behind chosing male dominated field of expertise. 

Talking of her experience, Janet was the 15th chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018, the first woman to hold the role. She was vice-chair from 2010 to 2014. She has been an economist and professor, who believes in tackling the problems from its roots. 

However, coming into the picture after Donald Trump broke the precedent by not appointing her in 2018, Yellen will have to measure United States’ economic condition with the Keynesian philosophy she believes in. Janet has strongly a willingness to use fiscal measures to stimulate economic recovery in a nation with a poverty rate reeling above 11%. “This is not a good time to have fiscal policy switch from being accommodative to creating a drag,” Yellen said in October. “That’s what happened [last decade], and it retarded the recovery.”

She backed Bernanke’s bond-buyback program and is expected to continue to enact and perhaps even expand an economic stimulus policy to boost the economy. Yellen a staunch believer of James Tobin could be see rescuing the economy from recession through governmental intervention.

Shedding light on her plans to tackle recession she said, “Now we are faced with a world characterized by secular stagnation. There is too much saving in the global economy, especially among developed countries and that has been drpriving monetary policy of a lot of the ability it had to address economic weakness.”

While the pandemic is still seriously affecting the economy, we need to continue extraordinary fiscal support,” she said in a Bloomberg Television interview in October. She called fiscal support early in the crisis “extremely impressive” but noted that key provisions had lapsed

With her first day at office days away, a challenge that stares into Yellen’s face is her bitter-sour relationship with the Republicans. Citing an example, the New York Times said that South Carolina Republican Mick Mulvaney in 2015 said that Yellen overstepped her boundaries by talking about inequality. 

However, some of them have also praised her selection by Joe Biden. Henry M. Paulson Jr., Treasury secretary under President George W. Bush, said that Janet Yellen will have a tough job ahead of her, but she has the experience, talent, credibility and relationships with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to make a real difference.