Yellin’

Yellin’
Screenshot

I was watching Steven Colbert the other night. It might have been a rerun but he interviewed former Treasury Secretary (Biden administration) Janet Yellon. She charmed him—and me

So of course, I went to YouTube for the replay.  https://youtu.be/abD2NS3Uh3g

Colbert starts with, “Legally I am required to ask -pause- are you high right now?” (so funny), She replied, nonchalantly, “so we smoked pot. It was OK . . .neither here nor there.” 

Of course I was intrigued. I read up on her:

Jane Yellen, an American economist, served as chair of the Federal Reserve under Barak Obama from 2014 to 2018 and served as the United States Secretary of the Treasury from 2021 – 2025. (Biden) She is the first woman to hold either post.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, her mother was a teacher, her father a physician. Yellen graduated from Brown University,intending to study philosophy. She earned a PhD. in economics from Yale and taught at Harvard from 1971 to 1976. She was a staff economist for the Federal Reserve Board (‘77-‘78), and was a faculty member at the London School of Economics from (‘78 -‘80). 

Yellen, Greenspan, Bernanke, Volcker

Following the 2020 election, the Senate Finance Committee unanimously approved Yellen’s candidacy forBiden’s Treasury Secretary by a 26–0 vote, with her oath of office administered by Vice President Harris the next day. In his remarks, Biden lauded her as “one of the most important economic thinkers of our time” who “spent her career focused on employment and the dignity of work.”

Yellen made a surprise visit to Kyiv, in February 2023 in which she reaffirmed ongoing U.S. economic support for Ukraine. In that summer, Yellen visited China. It was the first trip to the country by a U.S. Treasury Secretary in four years and her first since taking office. 

Yellen is widely considered to be a dove on monetary (more concerned with unemployment than with inflation). “Yellen is a Keynesian* economist and has been described as a “Keynesian to her fingertips”” wrote John Cassidy in The New Yorker. (April 3, 2013). 

She has quite a family: Yellen is married to economist George Akerlof, a university professor at Georgetown and UC Berkeley and a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics Sciences recipient. The couple met in the fall of 1977, became engaged by that December, and married the following summer. “She was drawn to his inventive mind.” Their son is a fellow economist. summa cum laude in economics and mathematics from Yale University and PhD in economics from Harvard University, where he was a Presidential Scholar.
Can you imagine their dinner table conversation?

Yellen has an estimated net worth of $20 million, accrued from stock holdings, speaking engagements,

and various government and academic positions. Upon taking office as U.S. Treasury Secretary, she divested her shares.

* Keynesian economics is an economic theory that states that aggregate (collective) demand is the primary driver of an economy.

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