Month: December 2020

*Disclaimer: I am no expert on anything I write about below, including the main topic, Janet Yellen. I am writing this post and my thoughts about the most impactful Biden cabinet pick, so I can learn more about what the next four years may look like.

The Daily dedicated a recent podcast to the news of President-elect Biden selecting Janet Yellen as his Secretary of Treasury. I grew more and more intrigued as I listened to the podcast, to the history of Janet Yellen. So, I listened to a few more podcasts about Janet Yellen, both recent and less-than-recent.

Here is some of what I came away with:

The Daily – “Biden’s Cabinet Picks, Part 1: Janet Yellen”

“Inequality is not a political issue. Inequality is an economic issue.”

[She] wants to get people into the workforce and working.

And I think this is a consistent view that Yellen has held for a long time. And it is something that she pairs with a real concern for making sure that the folks at sort of the margins of the labor market, you know, minorities, people with less education, et cetera, making sure that they have opportunities. So as Fed chair, she starts to talk about inequality.

…And she’s kind of the first Fed Chair who comes in and says, inequality is not a political issue. Inequality is an economic issue. And we need to be thinking about what it means for the future of our economy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/podcasts/the-daily/joe-biden-janet-yellen.html?showTranscript=1

NYTimes – “The Senate Is on Vacation While Americans Starve”

Discussing the need for continued support for American households:

And aside from the grave ethical questions raised by ending crucial safeguards for the vulnerable, such actions endanger the economy as a whole.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/24/opinion/coronavirus-federal-reserve.html?login=email&auth=login-email

For more background on the above op-ed, listen to this 9 minute interview of Janet Yellen from Planet Money.

The Journal. – “Janet Yellen’s Biggest Challenge Yet”

Another perspective on the cabinet pick from The Wall Street Journal. I found this one interesting as well, specifically in talking about Janet Yellen’s character. The podcast describes the 2014 White House Correspondents dinner and a photo showing Yellen as the only person in the ballroom before dinner because she is always on-time or early. Yellen is always prepared, is a fastidious notetaker, and is on-time.

Heather Cox Richardson – December 1, 2020.

Stimulus is an economic issue.

Former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, Biden’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, echoed Powell today. “Lost lives, lost jobs, small businesses struggling to stay alive are closed for good. So many people struggling to put food on the table and pay bills and rent. It’s an American tragedy. And it is essential we move with urgency. Inaction will produce a self-reinforcing downturn causing yet more devastation.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-1-2020

So far, I’m looking forward to the Biden administration. If you had told me during the Iowa Caucuses when I was cheering about Biden placing 4th, this was the administration that President-elect Biden would put together, I wouldn’t have believed you. (If you told me anything about the rest of 2020, I wouldn’t have believed you either!)

Matt Stoller discussed some finer details in his latest BIG newsletter on the Biden transition under the headline: “We Won’t Be Repeating the Obama Administration.” Stoller calls out three specific examples.

1. Bill Baer, head of Antitrust Division under President Obama. Baer is “heading up one of the antitrust review teams for the Biden transition. Baer didn’t do a great job under Obama, but he’s making some useful noises. “We should care too about under enforcement because it’s led to growing concentration in many markets, think agriculture, telecom, wireless, travel, pharma and beer,” he said at an American Bar Association conference.”
2. Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Supposedly gunning for Attorney General.
3. Sheryl Sandberg. A counter-example for the previous two. Sandberg was a “credible rumored candidate for Treasury Secretary had Hillary Clinton won.”

Two more notes on Amy Klobuchar from CNBC:

One of the areas that could interest Biden in choosing her to lead the Department of Justice is her stance on antitrust and her pushback on the tech giants. During her run for president, she said strong antitrust enforcement means looking back at the deal between Facebook and Instagram.

Klobuchar, along with a group of bipartisan lawmakers, has introduced the Honest Ads Act, which looks to “help prevent foreign interference in future elections and improve the transparency of online political advertisements.”

I’ve so far been pleased with what I’ve heard from the Biden transition team. As Stoller and many others have noted, progressives and the left-wing of the Democratic party are going to have a strong place in the centrist Biden administration. The progressive voice will be extremely important, especially if the Senate is still controlled by Mitch McConnell and the Republicans. Progressives will be needed as a counter-weight to both the Republicans and centrist Democrats who want things to stay the same, or only make incremental changes.