Search Results for: Janet Yellen

Janet Yellen Is Attempting to Consolidate the Fed’s Power to “Supervise” Wall Street Banks

Janet Yellen

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 10, 2021 ~ You know there’s a problem when the media relations office at the Federal Reserve will not turn over the bio for one of its employees that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen just tapped to be the acting head of a key Wall Street banking regulator. After days of media rumors that Yellen was set to appoint Michael Hsu, an Associate Director of the Federal Reserve’s Division of Supervision and Regulation, to be the acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Yellen made the announcement official on Friday. Hsu is set to assume that position today. We had attempted to obtain Hsu’s bio from the Federal Reserve for days. We were told they had no official bio. We asked for the resume Hsu provided when he was hired. We received no response. We then asked the Treasury Department’s … Continue reading

Ten Months after Stepping Down as Fed Chair, Janet Yellen Became Part of the “Leadership” Team for Forums Tied to the Chinese Communist Party  

Janet Yellen at the Amundi World Investment Forum in Paris in 2018 (Thumbnail

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 24, 2021 ~  Haven’t we learned anything about properly vetting people for the highest offices in the U.S. government? Former Fed Chair and Treasury Secretary nominee Janet Yellen has failed to report the details of millions of dollars in fees that she earned in 2018, the year she stepped down as Fed Chair, as she went on a whirlwind of speaking engagements in foreign cities around the world. Yellen’s “leadership” role with the Bloomberg New Economy Forums which had the “active participation and support” of an organization openly tied to the Chinese Communist Party, raises further serious red flags. And yet, Yellen sailed through her Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing this past week, gaining a favorable vote of 26-0. A full Senate vote to confirm Yellen as Treasury Secretary is expected to occur tomorrow. What Yellen did disclose on her Office of Government … Continue reading

Janet Yellen Is Set to Inherit a Helluva Lot of Power, Thanks to Stealthy Changes in the Law

Janet Yellen

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 18, 2021 ~ At 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, one day ahead of President-Elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, the Senate Finance Committee will hold the confirmation hearing for Janet Yellen to become the next U.S. Treasury Secretary. In that role, Yellen sits atop a sprawling federal agency that includes the IRS; the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks and reports on their hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives; the Bureau of Engraving and Printing; the U.S. Mint; the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) which is tasked with combating money laundering but has failed miserably in the job; and numerous other units. In addition, legislation passed by Congress puts Yellen in charge of the slush fund known as the Exchange Stabilization Fund; makes her the Chair of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, and, thanks to stealthy legislation passed during the … Continue reading

Compared to the Last Three Treasury Secretaries, Janet Yellen Is Mother Teresa

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 15, 2020 ~ President-elect Joe Biden’s nomination of Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary is being viewed cautiously in some progressive circles. As the post-financial crisis Chair of the Federal Reserve under President Obama, Yellen had the opportunity to interpret the rules of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in a manner that would rein in the risks of the mega banks on Wall Street. She failed in that regard while attempting to reassure a skeptical public that the Fed’s stress tests on the banks were adequate to prevent another crisis. Yellen famously stated at a London conference in 2017 the following: “Would I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis? You know probably that would be going too far, but I do think we are much safer, and I hope that it will not be in our lifetimes and I don’t believe … Continue reading

The Wall Street Journal Nominates Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary

Janet Yellen

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 24, 2020 ~ Late yesterday afternoon, while the stock market was still open, three reporters at the Wall Street Journal penned an article with this opening statement: “President-elect Joe Biden plans to nominate former Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, an economist at the forefront of policy-making for three decades, to become the next Treasury secretary, according to people familiar with the decision.” Within the next half hour, every major newswire and many of the largest newspapers in the U.S. were repeating the Journal’s story. The Journal noted that the Biden camp wasn’t expected to make a “formal announcement” of the Yellen nomination until November 30. Nonetheless, the Journal decided it had the self-anointed right to stand in for the Biden transition team and make the announcement a week ahead of time. To induce a nice big stock market rally on the news (the … Continue reading

Janet Yellen Decided to Share Her Worst Nightmares on CNBC Today

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 6, 2020 ~ Bulls on Wall Street were likely nonplussed at former Fed Chair Janet Yellen as her interview progressed on CNBC today. It was like she woke up from a terrible nightmare, threw on a little lipstick and dialed into CNBC to share her horrifying vision with an already shell-shocked public. The fact that Yellen chose to do this at a time when the Dow was up over 1,000 points and providing a few rays of sunshine made it all the more remarkable. Yellen said the economy had taken a “huge, unprecedented, devastating hit.” One of those adjectives might have been enough for a seasoned economist. Yellen dropped the breathtaking tidbit that second quarter GDP could see a contraction of 30 percent. She then ran through a gut-wrenching laundry list of what could go wrong on the road to trying to get … Continue reading

Fed Chair Janet Yellen Seriously Misleads in London on U.S. Banking Reform

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 28, 2017  Yesterday the Chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, was in London for a wide-ranging financial markets discussion with Nicholas Stern, the President of the British Academy. Making headlines from that discussion was Yellen’s stated belief that there will not be another financial crisis in our lifetimes. Yellen stated to Stern: “Would I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis? You know probably that would be going too far, but I do think we are much safer, and I hope that it will not be in our lifetimes and I don’t believe it will be.” While that remark has dominated the news, the more meaningful story is that Yellen (the top monetary authority in the United States; the head of the U.S. central bank; and the top dog at the Federal watchdog that regulates the largest bank holding … Continue reading

Fed Chair Janet Yellen Channels Bernie Sanders in Speech to Teachers

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 13, 2017  Last night the Federal Reserve convened a Town Hall meeting via webcast with K-12 teachers and college educators of economics and history. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen delivered a speech and then took a series of questions from teachers. It was during the Q&A period that Yellen gave a sobering assessment of the long-term prospects for the U.S. At numerous points, Yellen echoed the income inequality themes that Senator Bernie Sanders raised repeatedly at his rallies around the country during the presidential primaries. When asked about the biggest obstacles to the U.S. economy over the short and long term, Yellen said she did not have serious concerns over the short term but was worried about the longer term. In addition to productivity concerns, Yellen stated: (See video clip below.)  “We have seen over many decades now that the returns – the wages … Continue reading

No One Wants to Be Fed Chair Janet Yellen This Week

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 9, 2016  Tomorrow, Janet Yellen will scurry over to the Rayburn House Office Building to give her semi-annual testimony to the House Financial Services Committee, now under the control of a deeply paranoid Republican majority when it comes to the Federal Reserve. (Not that some of that paranoia isn’t justified.) There is no question that Yellen will face hostile questioning from Republicans on the Committee, as she has in the past, although the questions tend to venture far afield from the real financial threats to U.S. stability. Most Democrats, on the other hand, are so wedded to holding up the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation as their grand achievement after the 2008 crash that they refuse to look out the window and see the equity capital of the Wall Street mega banks currently in a death spiral as the same banks invent ever more … Continue reading

Meet the Nobel Laureate Nader Wants Janet Yellen to Talk To

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 24, 2015  After lamenting in a recent book how Presidents George W. Bush and Obama didn’t answer his letters (Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the President, 2001-2015), Ralph Nader has finally been requited by a powerful person in Washington. Nader had the temerity to write Fed Chair Janet Yellen a letter on October 30, pointing out how the Fed’s zero bound interest rate policy is crimping the spending ability of savers who rely on such things as savings accounts and money market interest for added income to survive. Yesterday, Yellen boldly answered Nader’s letter with a smackdown. The letter has caused an outbreak of sexism charges against Nader by various writers for his suggestion in the letter that Yellen would be wise to “sit down with your Nobel Prize winning husband, economist George Akerlof, who is known to be consumer-sensitive.” Annie Lowrey … Continue reading