Washington (AFP)
With Janet Yellen, the former president of the Fed who becomes the first woman to lead the US Treasury, Joe Biden has chosen a progressive economist, specialist in unemployment, and in favor of massive budget support.
The one who had already made history in 2014 by becoming the first woman at the head of the most powerful central bank in the world reiterates the performance by acceding at 74 years to the management of the United States Department of Finance.
She replaces Steven Mnuchin.
Her appointment having been largely confirmed by the Senate, it was Vice President Kamala Harris - she also the first woman in this post - who officially invested Janet Yellen at the helm of the US Treasury on Tuesday.
"+ Congratulations Madam Secretary +", "+ Thank you Madam Vice-President +", exchanged the two officials at the White House.
This economics enthusiast, former Harvard professor with a learned and sometimes jargonous speech, married to a Nobel Prize in economics (George Akerlof), takes up a crucial position to revive the world's first economy, weighed down by the Covid pandemic -19.
His expertise in the job market at a time when the unemployment rate has doubled since the health crisis to 6.7%, as well as his efforts to normalize the monetary policy carried out after the financial crisis of 2009 have earned him the respect of many. members of Congress.
During a grand oral before elected officials last week, the one who will hold the strings of the US budget had vigorously supported the massive recovery plan proposed by Joe Biden.
- "Thinking big" -
We must "think big", pleaded Ms. Yellen.
The Biden administration wants to push through a massive $ 1.9 trillion emergency aid plan to the economy.
This includes emergency aid for the most vulnerable households and small businesses.
"There is a consensus now: without new action, we risk a longer and harder recession and scars on the economy in the long term," Janet Yellen explained to senators.
To convince to vote the new plan of Joe Biden, Ms. Yellen noted that interest rates close to zero make it possible to borrow money without the cost of interest further increasing the debt of the United States.
"In the long term, I think the benefits will be much greater than the financial costs of this plan," she stressed to elected officials.
It will have a lot to do because reluctance exists even in the Democratic camp.
Economic advisor to Joe Biden's campaign, she defended measures to combat global warming and supports a carbon tax, which earned her the sympathy of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
"We need a public policy oriented to make a big difference on climate change," she said recently.
- Dove -
At the head of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018, she was seen by the markets as "a dove", less inclined than the "hawks" to raise interest rates to prevent inflation than to promote full employment .
During his first election campaign, Donald Trump criticized him by keeping rates low for encouraging the formation of a "big financial bubble" for the benefit of the Democrats.
Ms. Yellen is well acquainted with Jerome Powell, her successor to the Central Bank presidency, whose term runs until 2022, and who was her lieutenant when she held the reins of the Monetary Committee.
She was dismissed from the presidency of the Fed in 2018 by Donald Trump after being appointed there by Barack Obama.
A graduate of the prestigious Yale University, this heavily accented Jewish doctor's daughter from Brooklyn had entered the monetary institution through the back door among the battalions of economist researchers, and spent a third of her career there.
A professor at the University of California at Berkeley, she was also economic advisor to Democratic President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 1999 before chairing the regional branch of the San Francisco Fed.
In 2010, she became number 2 at the Central Bank and oversaw, in the shadow of Ben Bernanke, the largest monetary support plan to emerge from the financial crisis.
Four years later, this affable woman of small stature, with her face framed in a helmet of white hair, had succeeded her as head of the Fed to become in 2014 "the second most powerful woman in the world", according to Forbes, behind Angela Merkel.
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