Those of you who were yelling for Yellin to be the next chairperson of the Federal Reserve have gotten your way. She was confirmed by the Senate tonight in a 56 to 26 vote. I don’t know if there were a lot of absences or abstentions, or some of both.
I don’t think she was the president’s first choice. I got the feeling that he had promised the post to Larry Summers way back when he first brought him into the administration. If that’s true, it was a promise he couldn’t keep, as progressive senators rose up to block Summers’ potential nomination.
Either way, Obama can now say that he was the first president to nominate a women to head the Fed.
Personally, I don’t think we’ll notice much of a change. I hope to be proven wrong.
I don’t think so either since she was Bernanke’s Number 2. At least we were spared Larry Summers!
eh
never had a pony in this fight
It’s pretty much a classic example of incremental change in a positive direction. With an institution as tied up in the financial industry as the Fed, even tiny victories are better than none.
I’m not sure what you expect the Fed to be doing that they’re not doing right now.
The Fed is doing all it can. If Congress bothered to do its part, i.e. not be fucking idiots when it comes to fiscal policy, then maybe the Fed wouldn’t be doing all this quantitative easing in the hopes of stimulating the economy.
If there was more, and better, stimulus passed by Congress, QE would’ve long been done with, and the Fed would probably have been beginning to (or already in the process of) shrinking its balance sheet back towards pre-crisis level. The only reason it has had to do what it’s been doing is because Congress hasn’t done its fucking job. And for that, all the blame goes to Orange Julius and Senator Turtle.
The Fed is doing all it can.
That’s 100% false. It could give money directly to the people but then the Home Depot dipshit would have coronary, and we can’t have that now can we?
I’ve never heard of the Fed being allowed to do that, is it in its founding act or executive rules?
It can’t do it legally. I’m sure it could probably just do it if it wanted to actually do it. But legal? Nonsense.
Not true. The Fed could simply start printing more money. This would spawn wage and price inflation, which would help debtors with fixed-rate loans immensely. The additional liquidity would have stimulative effect on demand as well.
The Fed hasn’t gone that route in decades, but there’s nothing stopping it.
The only problem with that plan is that the Fed only gives money to banks, so how is all that extra liquidity getting to everyone else?
Not necessarily. It’s the amount of money in circulation that counts. Example: Janet Yellin prints a quadrillion dollars and gives it to me. I fill my basement up with it and never spend any. Net effect is zero. This is what’s happening with the QE money. Most of it is sitting in bank vaults (actually hard drives) and on corporate balance sheets as undistributed cash reserves. Much of the latter is used for stock buybacks which has boosted the stock market and CEO bonuses thereby, tremendously. It has inflated the stock market, but not consumer goods because it never got into the consumer’s hands. Yiu are correct in that if the Fed supplied the created cash to the government and the government gave it away or,preferably, spent it on domestic purchases, then there would be inflation which always accompanies economic expansion. Right now all that is expanding is the gap between rich and poor.
Can’t say I have any expectations for Yellin. She’ll be just another centrist tool, most likely. However, I’m thrilled about the appointment, because, if you’ll pardon my french, Fuck Larry Summers and the horse he rode in on.
Jeez!!! You sound like a bunch of…LIBERTARIANS!!!
Nyuk nyuk nyuk.
AG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Yellen
But spell it any way you want as long as summers is out of here – I think you’re badly underestimating the damage he’s capable of. Remember the repeal of Glass-Steagall? Corporate deregulation? Privatization? Seriously man, this guy was the brains (I use the term advisedly) behind every horrendous mistake of the last 20 years. Your argument seems to be that the fed chair isn’t a very important position so what could Summers have screwed up. Even if we accept the premise, you can be sure he would have come up with plenty to screw up.
Correct,
see Alan Greenspan for example ……
.
Well deserved appointment as Fed chair. Why are so many asking for an inflationary hawk? I lived through the seventies and from my limited knowledge of inflation: it’s bad policy and undermines economic strength. Ask the Germans.
Any thoughts on the appointment of former BoI executive Stanley Fischer as vice-chair to the US Fed?
○ Comedic Farce at the Bank of Israel
PS In article you misspelled the name Yellen.
ohh..l know..
Kaos Distro
Strange, the posts by these new trolls don’t show in link recent comments.
However the story on home page does show there is a new post added.
Someone is a lot more optimistic than I am.