Janet Yellen confirmed as Fed's first female chair

Janet Yellen has been confirmed as the first female Federal Reserve chair. She sailed through the Senate confirmation process, thanks in part to Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) invoking the "nuclear option," making it significantly easier to pass judicial and executive branch nominees. With only 56 senators voting in favor of Janet Yellen, she would not have had the votes necessary to be confirmed if the Senate confirmation rules were not changed. Janet Yellen is the first major executive branch nominee to be confirmed since these rules were changed. RT's Perianne Boring takes a look at the confirmation process of the most powerful woman in finance.

Janet Yellen on The Glass--Steagall Act

Does Deregulation Cause Global Financial Crises? Janet Yellen on Economic Growth (1998)

The financial sector in the U.S. has evolved a great deal in recent decades, during which there have been some regulatory changes and the creation of new financial products such as the securitization of loan obligations of various sorts and credit default swaps. Among the most important of the regulatory changes was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which repealed the parts of the Glass--Steagall Act which had not already been repealed. This 1999 Act took down barriers to competition between traditional banks, investment banks, and insurance companies, in some cases allowing firms to participate in all three markets thus making distinctions between these categories less clear.
Some believe that this deregulation contributed to the U.S. financial crisis of 2007-2009 and the Global financial crisis of 2008-2009. However, others dispute this assertion, and a lively debate on the causes of financial crisis is still under way.

Related legislation
1976 - Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act PL 94-435
1977 - Emergency Natural Gas Act PL 95-2
1978 - Airline Deregulation Act PL 95-50
1978 - National Gas Policy Act PL 95-621
1980 - Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act PL 96-221
1980 - Motor Carrier Act PL 96-296
1980 - Regulatory Flexibility Act PL 96-354
1980 - Staggers Rail Act PL 96-448
1982 - Garn--St. Germain Depository Institutions Act PL 97-320
1982 - Bus Regulatory Reform Act PL 97-261
1989 - Natural Gas Wellhead Decontrol Act PL 101-60
1992 - National Energy Policy Act PL 102-486
1996 - Telecommunications Act PL 104-104
1999 - Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act PL 106-102

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregula...

Is Janet Yellen a Keynesian? Council of Economic Advisers Chair Nomination (1997)

The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is an agency within the Executive Office of the President that advises the President of the United States on economic policy. The CEA provides much of the objective empirical research for the White House and prepares the annual Economic Report of the President.

The current Chairman of the CEA is Jason Furman, who was appointed by President Obama on June 10, 2013. One current Member of the CEA is Jim Stock, who was appointed in February 2013 after serving as the agency's Chief Economist. The previous two Chairs, Austan Goolsbee and Christina Romer, resigned their posts in August 2011 and September 2010, respectively to return to positions in academia.

The council's Chairman is nominated by the president and approved by the United States Senate. The Members are appointed by the president. The staff of the council consists of a Chief of Staff as well as about 20 academic economists, plus three permanent economic statisticians.

The council was established by the Employment Act of 1946 to provide presidents with objective economic analysis and advice on the development and implementation of a wide range of domestic and international economic policy issues. In its first seven years the CEA made five technical advances in policy making, including the replacement of a "cyclical model" of the economy by a "growth model," the setting of quantitative targets for the economy, use of the theories of fiscal drag and full-employment budget, recognition of the need for greater flexibility in taxation, and replacement of the notion of unemployment as a structural problem by a realization of a low aggregate demand.[6]
In 1949 a dispute broke out between Chairman Edwin Nourse and member Leon Keyserling. Nourse believed a choice had to be made between "guns or butter" but Keyserling argued that an expanding economy permitted large defense expenditures without sacrificing an increased standard of living. In 1949 Keyserling gained support from powerful Truman advisors Dean Acheson and Clark Clifford. Nourse resigned as chairman, warning about the dangers of budget deficits and increased funding of "wasteful" defense costs. Keyserling succeeded to the chairmanship and influenced Truman's Fair Deal proposals and the economic sections of National Security Council Resolution 68 that, in April 1950, asserted that the larger armed forces America needed would not affect living standards or risk the "transformation of the free character of our economy."[7]
During the 1953-54 recession, the CEA, headed by Arthur Burns deployed non-traditional neo-keynesian interventions, which provided results later called the "steady fifties" wherein many families stayed in the economic "middleclass" with just one family wage-earner. The Eisenhower Administration supported an activist contracyclical approach that helped to establish Keynesianism as a possible bipartisan economic policy for the nation. Especially important in formulating the CEA response to the recession—accelerating public works programs, easing credit, and reducing taxes—were Arthur F. Burns and Neil H. Jacoby.
The 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins Act required each administration to move toward full employment and reasonable price stability within a specific time period. It has had the effect of making the CEA's annual economic report highly political in nature, as well as highly unreliable and inaccurate over the standard two or five year projection periods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_...

Janet Louise Yellen (born August 13, 1946) is an American economist and professor who is the Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Previously, she was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton, and Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business. On October 9, 2013, President Barack Obama nominated Yellen to be Chair of the Federal Reserve. If confirmed, Yellen would be the first woman to hold the position.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Ye...

Peter Schiff: Janet Yellen as Fed Chairman is Very Bullish for Gold

Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Metals, predicts, "Americans' standard of living is going to move dramatically lower. . . . We're not going to be buying a lot of new things because stuff is going to be very expensive." Schiff contends, "This is just a question of time until the illusion is pierced. When the collapse happens, that's it--the party's over. America is going to have to live within its means." Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with money manager Peter Schiff.

Janet Yellen: In Her Own Words

Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg Television's "Lunch Money" Host Adam Johnson reports on the nomination of Janet Yellen as Fed Chairman. (Source: Bloomberg)

Obama nominates Janet Yellen to head Federal Reserve

Yellen would be the first woman to lead the nation's central Bank