美聯儲首位“女掌門”出爐

President Barack Obama will nominate Federal Reserve vice chair Janet Yellen to succeed Ben Bernanke as chairman of the nation's central bank, the White House said Tuesday. Yellen would be the first woman to head the powerful Fed, taking over at a pivotal time for the economy and the banking industry.

Both Yellen and Bernanke are scheduled to appear with Obama at the White House on Wednesday for a formal announcement.

Bernanke's term ends in January, completing a remarkable eight-year tenure in which he helped pull the U.S. economy out of the worst financial crisis and recession since the 1930's.

Under Bernanke's leadership, the Fed created extraordinary programs after the financial crisis erupted in 2008. It lent money to banks after credit markets froze, cut its key short-term interest rate to near zero and bought trillions in bonds to lower long-term borrowing rates.

Those programs are credited with helping save the U.S. banking system.

Yellen emerged as the leading candidate after Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury secretary whom Obama was thought to favor, withdrew from consideration last month in the face of rising opposition.

Yellen, 67, would likely continue steering Fed policy in the same direction as Bernanke. A close ally of the chairman, she has been a key architect of the Fed's efforts under Bernanke to keep interest rates near record lows to support the economy.

As vice chair since 2010, Yellen has helped manage both the Fed's traditional tool of short-term rates and the unconventional programs it launched to help sustain the economy after the financial crisis erupted in 2008. These include the Fed's monthly bond purchases and its guidance to investors about the likely direction of rates.

"She's an excellent choice and I believe she'll be confirmed by a wide margin," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

Obama's choice of Yellen coincides with a key turning point for the Fed. Within the next several months, the Fed is expected to start slowing the pace of its Treasury and mortgage bond purchases if the economy strengthens. The Fed's purchases have been intended to keep loan rates low to encourage borrowing and spending.

Yet even after the Fed scales back its bond buying, its policies will remain geared toward keeping borrowing rates low to try to accelerate growth and lower unemployment. The unemployment rate is a still-high 7.3 percent. Few expect the Fed to start raising the short-term rate it controls before 2015 at the earliest.

Yellen had long been considered a logical candidate for the chairmanship in part because of her expertise as an economist, her years as a top bank regulator and her experience in helping manage the Fed's polices. Her understanding of the financial system is widely respected: Before the crisis struck, she was among a minority of top economists who had warned correctly that subprime mortgages posed a severe threat.

On the Fed, Yellen has built a reputation as a "dove" — someone who is typically more concerned about keeping interest rates low to reduce unemployment than about raising them to avert high inflation. Her nomination could face resistance from congressional critics who argue that the Fed's low-rate policies have raised the risk of high inflation and might be breeding dangerous bubbles in assets like stocks or real estate.

Still, Yellen has said that when the economy finally begins growing faster and rates will need to be raised to prevent high inflation, she will move in that direction.

In the weeks leading to her selection, Yellen and Summers emerged as the two top contenders and were drawn into a highly unusual public battle. Yellen and Summers themselves kept quiet. But their warring camps waged a fight that stirred up Congress, spawned opinion columns and letters from Congress and triggered commentary from notables both inside and outside the economics profession.

Yellen drew outspoken support from Senate Democrats, a third of whom signed a letter this summer urging Obama to choose her. Last month, more than 350 economists signed a letter to Obama urging him to nominate Yellen. The letter argued that Yellen understands the relationship between interest-rate policy and economic growth, possesses a "nuanced understanding" of job markets and is inclined as a policymaker to consider all points of view.

If confirmed by the Senate, Yellen would be the first Democrat chosen to lead the Fed since Paul Volcker was picked by Jimmy Carter in 1979. Bernanke, who served for eight years, and his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, who did so for 18½ years, were Republicans. She would also be the first vice chair of the Fed to ascend to the chairmanship.

Yellen served as a Fed board member for three years in the 1990s before leaving to head the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton administration. She also served for six years as president of the Fed's regional bank in San Francisco before Obama chose her in 2010 for the No. 2 spot on the Fed's seven-member board in Washington.

In addition to helping devise the Fed's rate policies, she has been instrumental in carrying out another top priority of Bernanke's — making the Fed, an institution whose operations were long walled off from the public view, far more open and transparent. The Bernanke-led Fed did so through news conferences, clearer public communications and detailed guidance about the Fed's expectations for the economy and policymaking.

Yellen, like Bernanke, was a distinguished college economics professor before joining the Fed. She taught at the University of California at Berkeley from 1980 until 1994 when President Bill Clinton chose her to join the Fed's board in Washington. She served on the Fed's board of governors until February 1997, when Clinton chose her to lead the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Yellen would not only be the first woman to head the U.S. central bank; she also would be the first woman ever to head a major central bank anywhere in the world.

Yellen was born in Brooklyn and graduated from Brown University in 1967 with highest honors in economics. She received her doctorate in economics in 1971 from Yale, where she studied under the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin. In a 1997 interview with Business Week magazine, Tobin described Yellen as having "a genius for expressing complicated arguments simply and clearly."

She was an assistant professor at Harvard University from 1971 to 1976 and then worked as an economist at the Federal Reserve in Washington from 1977 to 1978. She met her husband, George Akerlof, in a Fed cafeteria. The two worked together for many years on the Berkeley faculty. Akerlof shared a Nobel in economics in 2001 with Joseph E. Stiglitz and A. Michael Spence.

Yellen was known as a pragmatist in her economic research, which ranged from studies on urban gang behavior to currency problems facing Germany after its reunification.綜合外國媒體報道，美國白宮10月8日宣佈，該國總統奧巴馬將在9日提名美國聯邦儲備委員會（Fed）現任副主席珍妮特•耶倫接任本•伯南克，擔任下一任美聯儲主席。如果上述提名獲參議院同意，耶倫將成爲史上執掌美聯儲的首位女性。

***美聯儲首位“女掌門”

按照計劃，耶倫和伯南克9日將與奧巴馬一同出現在白宮，發佈正式聲明。

伯南克的任期將於2014年1月31日結束，他在美聯儲任職8年間成績卓越，幫助美國經濟走出自20世紀30年代以來最嚴重的金融危機和經濟衰退。在其領導下，美聯儲在2008年金融危機爆發後創建了一系列項目，包括在信貸市場凍結後向銀行放貸、下調短期利率接近於零、以及購買數萬億美元的債券以降低長期借貸利率，這些舉措爲拯救美國銀行系統發揮了重要作用。

此前呼聲最高的候選人、前美國財政部長勞倫斯•薩默斯上月出乎意料地宣佈放棄競選後，耶倫成爲下任美聯儲主席的最有力競爭者。

現年67歲的耶倫一直是伯南克的得力助手和親密盟友，也是美聯儲“近零利率”舉措的關鍵推動者之一。耶倫獲得總統提名後，還需經參議院同意，如果順利出任，她將成爲歷史上掌舵美聯儲的首位女性，同時也是全球範圍內執掌重要的國家中央銀行的女性“第一人”。分析人士預計，耶倫出任美聯儲主席後極有可能延續伯南克現有的政策方向。

***旨在“安撫”金融市場

著名信用風險衡量和管理公司“穆迪分析”的首席經濟師馬克•贊迪認爲，美政府選擇在此時發佈提名聲明，是爲了向金融市場傳遞一個政策穩定信號。由於國會兩院分歧未能解決，美聯邦政府自10月1日起部分關門，更爲嚴重的是，如果國會未在10月17日前通過上調債務上限的法案，美國將面臨債務違約風險。

“受上述因素的影響，投資者愈加緊張、市場情緒極其不安，未來數日這一情形還會繼續惡化。”贊迪說，“因此，現在清楚地告訴外界誰將出任美聯儲下一任主席，應當至少對金融市場產生一定的積極邊際影響。”

美國會參議院銀行、住房和城市事務委員會（Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee）主席蒂姆•約翰森表示，他將和同事們儘快推進耶倫的任命得到確認，“她經驗豐富，在這一點上首屈一指。我毫不懷疑她將成爲一名出色的美聯儲主席”。

該委員會成員、民主黨籍參議員查克•舒默將奧巴馬提名耶倫稱爲“明智的選擇”，他預言耶倫將得到廣泛支持。

相關鏈接：珍妮特•耶倫簡歷

珍妮特•耶倫生於1946年8月13日，是一位美國猶太裔經濟學家。她在1971至1976年曾任哈佛大學助理教授，1977年至1978年間擔任美聯儲理事會經濟學家。自1980年起，耶倫開始在加州大學伯克利分校哈斯商學院從事研究工作並教授宏觀經濟學，現爲該學院名譽教授，並曾兩次榮獲該學院的傑出教學獎。

1994至1997年，耶倫由美國前總統比爾•克林頓提名，加入美聯儲理事會成爲理事。1997至1999年，克林頓任命耶倫爲美國白宮經濟顧問委員會主席。2004年7月至2010年，耶倫任舊金山聯邦儲備銀行行長兼執行總裁。2010年10月4日，她宣誓就任美國聯邦儲備委員會副主席，任期4年。華爾街普遍認爲耶倫爲“鴿派”，相較於通脹率，她更關注失業率，因此她不太可能主張美聯儲加息。

耶倫的丈夫爲2001年諾貝爾經濟學獎得主、加州大學伯克利分校名譽教授喬治•阿克洛夫。其子羅伯特•阿克洛夫現爲英國華威大學助理教授。