Janet Yellen, the woman who has broken the mold in the US economy

When

the bible of financial information in the United States, analyzed more than 700 predictions in speeches and messages of governors of the Federal Reserve (Fed in its abbreviation in English) between 2009 and 2012, the forecasts of Janet Yellen turned out to be the most accurate.

These were not easy times, the United States was dragging the chains of the Great Recession of 2008-2009, the one caused by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the implosion of junk mortgages, and Yellen (New York, 74 years old) still had a couple of years to go. years to lead the North American central bank, when President Barack Obama chose her to finish the adjustment path after the multimillion dollar monetary stimulus promoted by his predecessor at the head of the institution, Ben Bernanke, to revitalize the economy.

Today the future Secretary of the Treasury (equivalent to Minister of Economy) of the Joe Biden Administration, whom Donald Trump removed from the Fed in 2018, takes the helm of the economy in a higher echelon of responsibility, in which also It will have to assume, among other tasks, the poisoned trade diplomacy with China, but at a time as tricky as then, if not more: the global commotion caused by the coronavirus.

Yellen will land in the midst of negotiations on a new round of stimulus, with Congress blocked - the majority in the Senate is pending two tiebreakers in Georgia, in January - to boost the economic recovery of a country that the pathogen has put on its knees, blowing up the largest period of economic expansion in history, made possible in large part by the five hikes in interest rates adopted by the Fed.

Unlike her immediate predecessors in the Treasury - the financier Steven Mnuchin, or the more political profile of Jack Lew - Yellen has a solid academic background that, together with her experience in the Administration as a White House adviser, can make she is the right person to deal with a surly Congress on the amount of the new stimulus package needed to get recovery on track, and when the data on the evolution of the disease show no signs of improvement;

More item, a new massive outbreak is feared after Thanksgiving macrobridge.

The US is the most affected country in the world, with almost 12.4 million cases and 257,500 deaths.

"When unemployment is exceptionally high and inflation is historically low, as now, the economy needs more fiscal spending to support job creation," said Yellen, an expert on the labor market, in an article co-signed with another expert in August. in

.

The appointment of the one who on many occasions was classified as the second most powerful woman in the world, according to

magazine

, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has been welcomed by right and left.

Biden had promised an election that would please the more radical wing of Democrats and moderates, and Yellen's name draws unanimity.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a rival to Biden in the party's primaries and much more to the left than the president-elect, has called his appointment an "exceptional choice" and has praised a person "intelligent, solid and principled." .

In ideological antipodes, former Goldman Sachs executive and former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn considered it an "excellent option" to steer the economy.

Wall Street has also applauded his appointment, and this Tuesday confirmed it with a notable rise.

If the appointment is confirmed, Yellen, married to 2001 Nobel laureate in economics, George Akerlof, will be one of the most experienced people to take office in the department in its 231-year history: she led the Council of Economic Advisers for two years President Bill Clinton;

She presided over the Fed - and was its first woman at the helm - and now, her career as head of the Treasury culminates, in a new conquest: no other person, man or woman, has performed the three functions.

Her technical and academic profile (a doctorate at Yale, has been a professor for decades at Berkeley) is overwhelming, but her critics discuss the rudiments necessary for the exercise of politics in a situation of extreme polarization such as the current one, in which the balance of forces hangs by a thread, and especially when as head of the Fed he did the unspeakable, like the institution itself, to distance itself from the partisan game.

However, the

reported on Monday that everything points to her being confirmed in office even if Republicans gain control of the Senate - the decision-making House on approval - after Georgia's reelection.

Although in the last 20 years he has focused on monetary policy more than on fiscal policy, now he will have to reverse the tax cuts for the richest approved by the Trump Administration, and dedicate a good part of his efforts to implementing a fiscal policy to finance the billions of dollars in infrastructure, education or the fight against climate change promised by Biden in the campaign.

For someone who has broken molds, and broken glass ceilings, for the daughter of a doctor and a Brooklyn school teacher who also broke another gap in 1971 as the only female doctor of her class at Yale, it doesn't seem like an impossible endeavor.

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