Who will Obama appoint to head the Federal Reserve when Ben Bernanke's second four year term ends in January? Will it be Larry Summers, the polarizing consultant who has been working for Citigroup since he left his post as head of Obama's Council on Economic Advisers, or will it be the first woman, Janet Yellen, who is currently the Fed Vice Chairman?
Hans Nichols reports that
about a third of the Senate's Democratic caucus wrote Obama endorsing Yellen. At a 2007 Fed meeting, she said the biggest risk to economic growth was housing, which she called the “600-pound gorilla in the room.” She was right.Heating up the discussion over gender is Summers’s history before he joined the Obama White House. He resigned as president of Harvard University in 2006 after apologizing for remarks in which he hypothesized that women might inherently be weaker than men in the sciences.
The current 7.6 percent jobless rate is little changed from when Summers took over in January 2009 as Obama’s top economic adviser. In that role for two years, he gave Obama a daily briefing. They also played golf and tennis, forging their personal relationship.
While Summers antagonized some White House officials, including senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, he has far more internal advocates than Yellen, who lacks personal ties with Obama’s inner circle.
I feel certain that I could beat Obama in a game of golf and in tennis. I would not even ask for age adjustments, as Summers did after a tennis match at Camp David. I am less sure as to whether I might be qualified to be appointed head of the Federal Reserve, although I do know that one cannot spend more money than one has.
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