The First Female U.S. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen

Wall Street is among many who love Janet Louise Yellen and are happy to see her confirmed as President Biden’s U.S. Treasury Secretary by the Senate in January 2021 by an 84 to 15 vote with major support of the Senate Finance Committee. She is the first woman to lead that institution since its establishment in 1789.

Yellen will again face a huge challenge as the United States attempts to rebound from the deadly Coronavirus pandemic, which has been the trigger for the worst downturn in the economy since the Great Depression. Yellen plans to call on lawmakers for more stimulus to the sputtering economy to avoid a longer and deeper recession. She says that without additional action, there is a risk now for a recession that is longer and more painful and that a long-term scarring of the economy could come later.

The Congressional Budget Office, which issues regular economic and budgetary forecasts and is nonpartisan, has projected that the economy will return to the pre-pandemic size by mid-2021 regardless of whether Congress approves additional federal aid for recovery, but that it would be years before those that were thrown off their jobs by the pandemic would return to work.

A possible bright outlook was due to large sectors of the economy having adapted better and in a more rapid manner to the pandemic than was originally expected. They also referenced the increased growth from the $900 billion economic aid package that Congress passed in December that included $600 checks to individuals and generous unemployment benefits.

The Budget Office further expects the unemployment rate to fall to 5.3 percent at the end of 2021, which is down from last July’s 8.4 percent projection, and the economy is expected to grow 3.7 percent for 2021.

At age 74, having been born on August 13, 1946, in Brooklyn, New York she also holds the distinction of being the first person who has ever held all three of the Federal Government’s top economic posts. Another was being chair of the Council of Economic Advisors by the appointment of former President Bill Clinton until 1999 while concurrently chairing the Economic Policy Committee of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. She was appointed vice-chair of the Board of Governors of the Fed in 2010.

The third was being the first chairwoman of the Federal Reserve System from 2014 to 2018 after her appointment by former President Barack Obama, where she helped with the recovery of the United States from the financial crisis of 2008. She was also noted for the wage and job growth that occurred while she also maintained low interest rates. In 2018, she was succeeded by Jerome Powell and worked closely with him as she advised on the economic recovery by the USA from the Coronavirus pandemic.

A Wall Street Journal survey in 2017 found a large majority of economists, 60%, stated that she deserved an “A” for her performance. She was known for always being prepared and for carrying notes in a thick binder for news conferences.

Yellen graduated from Brown University summa cum laude in economics in 1967 and received her Ph.D. in economics in 1971 from Yale University. She also held an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Bard College and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Brown University.