Yellen has always been too quick to fold, and we saw that in her time as fed chair. Wall Street and silicon Valley insiders know this, which might be why they immedieately tried to put their PR campaign's focus on her (rather than Jerome Powell, who is a little bit steadier at the poker table).
Are you a trader? I traded global rates markets from 2012-2020 and yellen was probably the best central bank head I saw. She was the most stable and consistent. I would argue she was the least beholden to market pressure out of any bank head, except perhaps Draghi, who just did not care much the last couple years. She was also the least likely to react to congress or press questions and cause unnecessary market volatility.
I have an issue with Yellen and it has nothing to do with her policies. It is with her use of online notifications via FinCEN. As annoying as Mnuchin was, he didn't send an update readout of the time he farted in a museum or read a treatise on funding random things. She seems to treat the entire ecosystem as her own personal PR team.
Fed chairs have always received a lot of political pressure from the ruling party. Most administrations do it quietly. Yellen was particularly cozy with the white house in her day as fed chair, which is why she is now treasury secretary.
The past three presidents haven't understood the danger of keeping rates low, but so far it has paid off for them.
Yellen was the 11th President of the SF Fed [1] and the current president is her protégé [2]. Greg Becker (SVB CEO & president) was in SF Fed board of directors until Friday [2]. He successfully lobbied for less regulations for his bank. The SF Fed looked the other way.
I was in Wall St for the end of her tenure. I admired her handling of the beginning of her time as Fed chair (not raising rates too early when Wall Street was yelling for it), but IMO she ended up folding to pressure from politicians and Silicon Valley types to keep rates low for far too long. She was very good at not listening to the market (which is arguably a bad thing - when your rate target is 0-25 bps and rates are trading at ~20 bps, maybe you should listen?) or to the traditional Wall Street types, though.
Agreed 100% Yellen sucks. She would be bad in "good" financial times, but in our current times, its even worse. Mismanaged inflation (or at least perception of it) and is offering the US as a personal bank to Ukraine (among 100x other things).
Completely mis-placed argument, although an interesting data point. Janet Yellen is fighting a massive PR battle to win the fed job. This article is clearly a PR plant, its obvious because there is no discussion or culpability attributed to Clinton or the Democratic party or other operatives (president directly is responsible for the WTO via the executive). The co-incidental exclusion of the predisent and the treasury secretary (presumably to protect Ms Clinton's 2016 political position) is the hallmark of a pro, not a reporter. What kind of PR uses vice.com to support a candidate for the FED?
Yellen is an incompetent ideologue. I studied applied economics in university, and the first code I wrote for a real application were inflation simulations. When she and the Fed made the claim a few years ago that "inflation was transitory" I ended up calling several of my smartest classmates. It was a nice excuse to reconnect, and universally all of us were asking what she was smoking.
It wasn't just us. Larry Summers was prominently and publicly stating that the inflation was definitely not transitory. But the banks believed her, and continued in 2021 to buy these securities as if interest rates were going to be going low again in the near future.
As a top-of-her-field academic and policymaker, I can’t think of many who are better suited than Yellen to directly engage SBF on the substance of what’s happened
Janet Yellen during Obama's second term didn't want to raise interest rates to protect Democrats. However, she wanted to raise interest rates during Trump. That's why Trump didn't renominate her. Why blame Powell here? Blame Janet Yellen, when she should have started raising rates under Obama.
Or making some "government efficiency" watchdog group scream in anger.
If Yellen were mostly interested in money, she has already chaired the Federal Reserve. 700K is a pittance compared to the millions she would earn in the private sector. Yet people begrudge her the 220K she does earn. Treasury Secretary and Chair of the Fed would be a multi million dollar a year jobs in the private sector.
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