Search Results for: Yellen

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 →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 21, 2021 ~ The mood among Democrats in Washington was captured at the Senate Finance Committee’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday for former Fed Chair Janet Yellen to become the new Treasury Secretary. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and the Ranking Member of the Committee (who is expected to become the new Chair), said this in his opening remarks: “This is the second time in 12 years that a Republican President leaves office with the economy in ruins. Today there’s also a surging pandemic and armed troops guarding our Capitol from far-right insurrectionist attack. The Biden administration isn’t going to begin with inaugural balls; it’s going to begin with all-out triage.” Wyden also made clear that he doesn’t intend to be bullied into the same failed strategy that governed the response to the Wall Street implosion of 2008. Wyden stated: “My top economic … Continue reading →

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 →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 6, 2021 ~ On December 29 we needed a clarification from former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers about his opinion column against Congress issuing $2,000 stimulus checks. We sent him an email at 10:13 a.m. and received a very clear response from him directly at 12:51 p.m. that day — a span of a few hours. Compare that timely response to Janet Yellen’s respect for the media’s obligation to report a full set of facts to the American people. Three days ago, we contacted Yellen at four different entities with which she is affiliated. Only the Brookings Institution responded, saying she was on leave. President-elect Joe Biden’s media team did not respond at all, nor did the Washington Speakers Bureau and University of California, Berkeley. Yellen is Biden’s nominee for U.S. Treasury Secretary. In anticipation of her Senate confirmation hearing, she has released her … Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

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 →