Biden set to pick former US Fed chair Janet Yellen as his Treasury Secretary
US President-elect Joe Biden is expected to tap former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen as US Treasury Secretary, according to two Democratic allies.
A spokesman for Biden’s campaign declined to comment on the Treasury Secretary role.
Former US Fed chair Yellen also declined to comment.
Janet Yellen, 74, would be the first woman to head the Treasury and Biden’s choice represents a move to go with an experienced policymaker respected by Congress, international finance officials, progressives and business interests alike.
The role is currently held by former Goldman Sachs investment banker Steve Mnuchin.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that Biden planned to tap Yellen.
Yellen has called for increased government spending to boost the US economy out of a deep recession brought on by the coronavirus and has frequently cited growing economic inequality in the United States as a threat to America’s values and its future.
At Treasury, she would have a major role in influencing US fiscal and tax policy, tools she did not have at the Fed, which she chaired from 2014 to 2018.
Yellen was vice chair from 2010 to 2014.
The daughter of a family doctor and elementary school teacher in Brooklyn, Yellen earned a doctorate in economics from Yale and has taught economics at the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University and the London School of Economics (LSE).