Janet Yellen’s lack of credibility

Treasury secretary makes outrageous statements and plays word games

The words used by her party, the Democrats, describe Janet Yellen have been amazingly consistent over the years. Ironically, in retrospect almost eerily, the introductions always followed the pattern of the Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, of “I’m pleased to announce Janet Yellen as first woman to become the — fill in the blank — which for Mr. Biden was “treasury secretary.” Notice the difference between that sentence and the one never spoken of “Based on her record of achievement of — fill in the blanks — as a — fill in the blanks — I am proud to nominate her as the first woman

…”

Here are a few recent examples that might have been avoided with this sentence.

Recently Treasury Secretary Yellen said, “The $80 billion for the 87,000 IRs agents will be used to audit small family businesses and tip earners” after campaigning for it to be passed with “The $80 billion and 87,0000 IRS agents will only be used to audit billionaires.”

It is doubtful that a person with accomplishments would either mistakenly, or intentionally, have been so dishonest.

Recently Secretary Yellen said, “I wish I knew,” to U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan’s question, “Why was the IRS visiting the home of reporter Taibbi as he was addressing my committee on the data that Elon Musk gave him from Twitter files on the DOJ’s weekly efforts to block the coverage of Hunter Biden’s lap top until after the 2020 elections?”

“She wishes she knew” is not credible as the IRS, which reports to her, was obviously trying to intimidate a congressional witness testifying to her party’s attempts to influence an election. A person with any integrity would have added, “But I will find out.”

Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, asked Secretary Yellen if the proposed Biden budget she was supporting contained $4.7 trillion in tax increases. That led to Secretary Yellen’s response of “It does contain some increases,” followed by Sen. Kennedy saying “$4.7 trillion,” to which Yellen said “Something like that.” Really?

Secretary Yellen’s career began when Harvard University, long before it announced Elizabeth Warren would be its first Native American faculty member, announced Janet Yellen would be the second woman to be employed by their Economics Department after she was awarded a Ph.D. from Yale University. She joined the first woman in writing several academic papers.

She next joined the Federal Reserve as a staff economist and met her husband, economist George Akerlof, who she followed to the London School of Economics before following him to the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, where she became the “second woman” to earn tenure while teaching undergraduates and MBA students instead of the graduate students taught by renowned scholars.

President Bill Clinton nominated Ms. Yellen as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (1994-1997) and then chair of his Council of Economic Advisors (1997-1999), where after she said, “Inequality has risen to the point that it seems to me worthwhile for the U.S. to seriously consider taking the risk of making our economy more rewarding for more of the people,” President Clinton ordered that 25% of all new mortgages be issued to minorities who did not qualify.

In 2001, Ms. Yellen’s husband George Akerlof shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science for their “analysis of markets with asymmetric information.” It is speculation about whether his fame assisted Janet’s becoming the “first woman” to be appointed president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (2004), where she so favored Mary C. Daly that in Mary’s words her career “exploded upward,” leading to her becoming the head of the San Francisco Federal Reserve in 2018.

Unfortunately, when President George W. Bush increased the quota from 25% to 50% of new mortgages required to go to minorities who otherwise did not qualify, the lenders — Washington Mutual, Countrywide and others — got even more creative by not even requiring any documents to indicate the ability to make the payments. When Wall Street leveraged these “no docs,” the market crash of 2008 resulted.

Enter President Obama, who nominated Ms. Yellen to be the “second woman” to be the vice chair of the Federal Reserve, despite a senator who voted against her appointment saying “Yellen has an inflationary bias.” in November 2020, Presidentelect Biden said he would nominate Ms. Yellen to be his treasury secretary as she continued her Keynesian approach of “the state has a duty to tackle poverty and inequality” with her focus on “race and sex” by appointing Janis Bowdler, described as a “Latina activist, as the “first-ever” counselor for racial equity.

President Obama nominated Ms. Yellen to be the chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in February 2014 after she testified that she did not believe that a so-called “everything bubble” was forming. During her term , the Federal Reserve kept interest rates at almost zero to help the Obama-Biden economy.

In February 2018, President Trump made her the first chair in nearly 40 years not to be nominated for a second term and replaced her with Jerome Powell.

Secretary Yellen then insisted that the inflation in the Biden economy was “transitory” without offering any reasons why she