Janet Louise Yellen was born on August 13,1946 and is an American economist serving as the 78th United States secretary of the treasury since January 26,2021.
87 Facts About Janet Yellen
2.
Janet Yellen previously served as the 15th chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018.
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Janet Yellen is the first person to hold those positions having led the White House Council of Economic Advisers and the first woman to hold either post.
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Janet Yellen taught as an assistant professor at Harvard University from 1971 until 1976 when she began working for the Federal Reserve Board as a staff economist from 1977 to 1978 before joining the faculty of the London School of Economics from 1978 to 1980.
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Janet Yellen served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 1994 to 1997 and was nominated to the position by President Bill Clinton, who then named her chair of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1997 to 1999.
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Janet Yellen subsequently returned to academia before being appointed president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2004 until 2010.
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Janet Yellen had one of the shortest tenures in that position and was succeeded by Jerome Powell after President Donald Trump refused to renominate her for a second term.
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On November 30,2020, then-President-elect Joe Biden nominated Janet Yellen to serve as secretary of the treasury; she was confirmed by the US Senate on January 25,2021, and took office the next day.
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Janet Yellen was born on August 13,1946, to a family of Polish Jewish ancestry in the Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, neighborhood of New York City, and grew up there.
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Janet Yellen's mother was Anna Ruth, an elementary school teacher who gave up her teaching job to become a stay-at-home mother.
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Janet Yellen's father was Julius Yellen, a family physician who worked from the ground floor of their house.
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Janet Yellen shared that nearly the entirety of its Jewish population, including many of her relatives, was deported or murdered during the Holocaust.
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Janet Yellen attended the local Fort Hamilton High School, where she was an honor society member and participated in the booster club, the psychology club, and the history club.
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Janet Yellen served as editor-in-chief of The Pilot, the school newspaper, which continued its 13-year streak as the first-place winner of the prestigious Columbia Scholastic Press Association contest under her leadership.
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Janet Yellen earned a National Merit commendation letter and was admitted to a selective science honors program at Columbia University to voluntarily study mathematics on Saturday mornings.
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Janet Yellen graduated in 1963 as the valedictorian of her class.
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Janet Yellen enrolled at Pembroke College in Brown University, initially intending to study philosophy.
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Janet Yellen's dissertation was titled Employment, Output and Capital Accumulation in an Open Economy: A Disequilibrium Approach under the supervision of James Tobin, a noted economist who would later receive the Nobel Memorial Prize.
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Janet Yellen later described Yale professors Tobin and William Brainard as "lifelong mentors" who laid the intellectual groundwork for her economic views.
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Janet Yellen was the only woman among the two dozen economists who earned their doctorates from Yale in 1971.
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In 1977, Yellen took a job within the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors after failing to win tenure at Harvard; she was recruited as a staff economist for the Board of Governors by Edwin M Truman, who had known her from Yale.
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Janet Yellen left her post at the Fed to accompany him and was given a tenure-track lectureship by LSE.
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In 1980, Janet Yellen joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught at the Haas School of Business to conduct macroeconomics research and teach undergraduate and MBA students for more than two decades.
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Janet Yellen earned the Haas School's outstanding teaching award twice, in 1985 and 1988.
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Janet Yellen became just the second woman at Berkeley-Haas to earn tenure in 1982, as well as the title of full professor in 1985.
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From 1994 to 1999, Janet Yellen took a leave of absence from Berkeley to go into public service.
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Janet Yellen was appointed the Eugene E and Catherine M Trefethen Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Economics in 1999 and remained an active faculty member until she was appointed president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in 2004.
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Janet Yellen was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley in 2006.
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Janet Yellen was a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1999 to 2010.
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Janet Yellen has written a few widely cited papers, often collaborating on research with her husband, Professor George Akerlof.
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In July 1994, during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, Janet Yellen said that Fed policies should keep the economy growing as much as possible without accelerating inflation but avoid taking a clear position on the prospect of further increases in interest rates.
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Janet Yellen was installed as the fourth female governor, joining Susan M Phillips, which marks the first time that two women have sat on the Federal Reserve Board simultaneously.
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Janet Yellen marshaled academic research to dissuade Chairman Alan Greenspan from committing the Fed to a zero inflation policy and demonstrate that the central bank should seek to moderate inflation rather than eliminate it.
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On December 20,1996, Janet Yellen joined the Clinton administration as chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, replacing Joseph Stiglitz in office.
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In June 1999, Janet Yellen announced that she was stepping down from the CEA for personal reasons and would return to teaching at UC Berkeley.
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Janet Yellen was the first woman to hold this position.
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On June 5,2009, Janet Yellen said that the Federal Reserve should consider raising interest rates earlier to prevent another housing bubble.
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Janet Yellen argued that higher short-term interest rates probably went against the expansion of a bubble in certain circumstances, like restraining the demand for housing and high-risk mortgages.
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In July 2009, Janet Yellen was mentioned as a potential successor to Chairman Ben Bernanke when his term was set to expire before he was re-nominated for a second four-year term.
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Janet Yellen eventually emerged as the leading contender for vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board in March 2010, and following her Senate confirmation, she resigned from the San Francisco Fed in October of that year.
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Janet Yellen's pending confirmation, along with those of Peter Diamond and Sarah Bloom Raskin to fill vacancies, was seen as possibly furthering such a shift in the FOMC.
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Janet Yellen was just the second woman to hold the Federal Reserve's No 2 post, after Alice Rivlin.
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In contrast to her predecessors, Janet Yellen acted more independently within the institution in her role as vice chair.
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Janet Yellen has been urging Bernanke and the other FOMC members to follow her preferred route for monetary policy, arguing for more forceful actions to inject money into the economy to reduce unemployment.
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Janet Yellen played a leading role in moving the Federal Reserve to announce its inflation target of two percent a year after her long campaign with Chairman Bernanke; she was an early supporter of inflation targeting, facing opposition from Chairman Greenspan during her first stint at the Fed in the 1990s.
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Janet Yellen was widely considered the front-runner to succeed Bernanke as the Federal Reserve's chair when his second term ceased.
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Janet Yellen sparked further controversy for remarks on women's aptitude in math and science, which he made in 2005 while serving as Harvard University's president.
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In July 2013, Janet Yellen was pushed to be named the first chairwoman of the central bank in a letter that was circulated among the Senate Democrats and had been signed by almost a third of the 54 caucus senators, who primarily represent the liberal wing of the party.
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On October 9,2013, Janet Yellen was officially nominated to replace Bernanke as chair of the Federal Reserve, the first vice chair ever to be elevated to that post.
50.
Janet Yellen said that it is important for the Fed to try to detect asset bubbles and that if she saw one, she would work to address it.
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Janet Yellen was a trailblazer as the first woman to head the US central bank, or any major central bank, and the first Democrat to do so since Paul Volcker assumed that position in 1979 via President Jimmy Carter.
52.
Janet Yellen was sworn into office on February 3,2014, and was previously elected as FOMC chair on January 30.
53.
On December 16,2015, the Federal Reserve under Janet Yellen increased its key interest rate for the first time since 2006.
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Janet Yellen argued that it would be inappropriate to weaken or repeal the law designed to prevent a repeat of the global financial crisis.
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Janet Yellen provided further support for financial regulations enacted in the wake of the Great Recession in a speech to the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium on August 25,2017.
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Janet Yellen made her resignation from the Federal Reserve Board at the conclusion of her chairmanship known after Trump's choice, despite still having her assignment as Fed governor until 2024.
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Janet Yellen served a single term and became just the second Federal Reserve chair eligible for reappointment not renominated by a successor presidential administration, the first being Arthur F Burns almost 40 years prior.
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On February 2,2018, her last day in office, Janet Yellen enforced unprecedented sanctions on Wells Fargo, the third-largest US bank at the time, with a consent order that restricted the firm's future growth until the organization fixed its internal problems.
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Janet Yellen completed her time at the Fed with the lowest final unemployment rate of any Fed chair since William McChesney Martin in 1970.
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Janet Yellen holds a unique place in the history of the Federal Reserve System.
61.
On February 2,2018, the Brookings Institution announced that Janet Yellen would join the think tank as a distinguished fellow in residence with the Economic Studies program, effective February 5,2018.
62.
In November 2020, Janet Yellen left her position at Brookings after being selected as a nominee to serve as Treasury secretary.
63.
On June 27,2017, Janet Yellen stated that she did not expect another financial crisis "in our lifetime" because she thought banks were "much stronger" as a result of Federal Reserve oversight.
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Janet Yellen raised further concern over Trump's regard for the independence of the central bank and voiced support for her successor, Jerome Powell.
65.
On July 17,2020, at the hearing of the House Select Oversight Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, which was set up by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, former Federal Reserve chairs Bernanke and Janet Yellen testified about the economic policy response to the negative impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
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Janet Yellen expressed this commitment to stimulus in an op-ed for The New York Times with Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
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Between 2018 and 2020, Janet Yellen received over $7million in speaking fees from financial companies such as Barclays, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and the hedge fund Citadel after leaving the Federal Reserve.
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Janet Yellen edged out other top contenders to obtain the position, including Fed Board Gov.
69.
On July 23,2021, Janet Yellen sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders in which she urged lawmakers to increase or suspend the nation's debt limit as soon as possible before it hit its statutory limit in August and the government would be unable to pay its bills.
70.
In January 2023, after Republicans took control over the House, Janet Yellen informed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and new congressional leadership that the US expected to hit the debt ceiling on January 19 and that the Treasury yet again would be forced to use "extraordinary measures" to prevent default, and it could last until June of that year.
71.
Janet Yellen was a key proponent of a price cap on Russian oil, a plan designed to deprive the Kremlin of funding for Russia's war in Ukraine while reducing an inflation surge by preserving the global oil supply.
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Janet Yellen announced possible plans for a government version of a stablecoin; the administration is studying the possibility of issuing a central bank digital currency or digital dollar while taking into consideration the impact of a CBDC on monetary policy, national security, and international trade, as well as its utility for consumers.
73.
Janet Yellen said that any moves from the other nations to undermine collective international effort to make Russia accountable for its aggression would draw the ire of the US and its allies.
74.
In December 2022, Janet Yellen wrote an essay for Project Syndicate in which she singled out the key risks for the US economy that may be mitigated with the implementation of friendshoring policies.
75.
On May 10,2022, during a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Yellen made comments on the economic consequences of Roe v Wade overturning after a leaked draft majority opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization showed the Supreme Court was poised to overrule its previous decisions that legalized abortion in the United States.
76.
Janet Yellen met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the country's prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, to discuss the rollout of about $1.25 billion in budget relief, the first of a $10 billion package of civilian assistance for things like schools, hospitals, and emergency services, among others.
77.
On March 12,2023, amidst the banking crisis, Janet Yellen made an appearance on CBS' Face the Nation and affirmed that financial regulators closely monitored the state of the banking system to make sure it remained safe and well-capitalized.
78.
Janet Yellen's speech attempted to revive dialogue, at least on economic matters, as she made clear her desire to visit China as soon as possible to get the countries' previously pragmatic approach to each other back on track.
79.
Janet Yellen was overall in favor of more stringent financial regulation to lessen systemic risks brought on by flaws in the financial system.
80.
In September 2021, at a House Financial Services Committee hearing, Janet Yellen lent support to efforts for the complete removal of the debt ceiling, arguing that the borrowing cap is "very destructive" and poses an unnecessary threat to the American economy.
81.
In January 2019, Janet Yellen was among the 45 original signers of the Economists' Statement on Carbon Dividends, which was eventually signed by over 3,500 prominent American economists promoting a carbon dividends framework for the US policy on climate change.
82.
In October 2020, the Group of Thirty's Steering Committee Working Group on Climate Change and Finance, which Janet Yellen co-chaired with Mark Carney, prepared a report that developed a robust and inclusive strategy to amplify and mainstream the global transition to a net zero emissions economy.
83.
Janet Yellen has received numerous honors in recognition of her career in academia and politics.
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Janet Yellen is married to George Akerlof, an economist who is a university professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and Koshland Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate.
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Janet Yellen has an estimated net worth of $20million, accrued from stock holdings, speaking engagements, and various government and academic positions.
86.
Janet Yellen inherited from her mother a valuable collection of postage stamps worth between $15,000 and $50,000.
87.
On NBC's sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, Janet Yellen has been parodied by actress Kate McKinnon in 2021.