A group of senators, the New York Times editorial board, Paul Krugman, Dean Baker, and lots of other folks who share a common bent are pounding their fists for Janet Yellen to succeed Ben Bernanke.
She’s Yale educated, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, was on the Fed board in the 1990s, was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2004 to 2010, and has been vice chairwoman ever since. But let’s not hold all that against her.
In fact, I think her tenure at the Fed has to be a huge positive: Having served under Greenspan (the architect of mammoth bailouts and the facilitator of the mother of all modern bubbles), then under Bernanke (the, well, the Greenspan on steroids), if anyone has witnessed how not to handle monetary policy it would be Ms. Yellen. Of course the aforementioned “experts” are betting on her living up to her rep as the doviest of doves (ultra easy money advocate). I’m betting that a woman with the intellect and tenacity that her resume displays—having firsthandedly experienced the past 20 years of monetary folly—possesses the courage to renounce the faulty theories she was reared on and put monetary policy on a legitimate track.
I bet I lose my bet…