anet Yellen: who is the first female US treasury secretary confirmed by the Senate – and why did Joe Biden nominate her?

Janet Yellen is seen as being “pro-spending”, which has got market traders very excited indeed

The US Senate has approved President Joe Biden’s nomination of Janet Yellen to be the nation’s 78th treasury secretary, making her the first woman to hold the job in the department’s 232-year history.

The Senate confirmed her nomination with a vote of 84 – 15, with one Senator not voting.

But who is Janet Yellen? What’s her monetary experience? And just why did her nomination get the markets excited last year?

Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve Chair in 2015 (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Here is everything you need to know about her.

Who is Janet Yellen?

Janet Yellen was born in 1946 to a Polish Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York..

President Barack Obama shakes hands with Janet Yellen during a press conference to nominate her to head the Federal Reserve in 2013 (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

She graduated from Pembroke College in Brown University with a degree in economics in 1967, and received her Ph.D. in economics from Yale University in 1971 with a dissertation titled, "Employment, Output and Capital Accumulation in an Open Economy: A Disequilibrium Approach".

Soon after, Yellen was appointed as an assistant professor of economics at Harvard University, after which she became an economist with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

After a number of years teaching at places like the London School of Economics and the University of California, President Bill Clinton appointed Yellen as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 1995.

A few years later in 1997, Yellen left the Federal Reserve to become chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, only the second woman to hold the job.

There she oversaw a landmark report focused on the gender pay divide, which concluded that the gap had no correlation with differences in productivity and was the repercussions of discrimination within the workforce.

In 2004, Yellen was chosen as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the first woman to hold those positions, and in 2010, President Obama nominated Yellen to become vice-chair of the Federal Reserve.

Just three years later, she was nominated to become Chair, but when President Trump nominated Jerome Powell to succeed her when her term ended, Yellen announced that she would leave the Fed at the end of her term.

Why has she been picked by Biden?

Yellen is widely considered to be one of the most successful chairs of the Federal Reserve System.

During her term, the unemployment rate dropped to its lowest in 17 years – the first time the US economy had added jobs throughout every month of a Fed chair's tenure.

When the announcement came in November 2020 that Yellen was Biden’s pick for treasury secretary, traders reacted positively and New York’s Dow Jones reached a historic mark as it broke through 30,000 points for the first time in the index’s 124-year history.

Experts said the boost was driven by “the positive impact the pro-spending former Fed chair… is expected to make as Treasury Secretary”.

Yellen’s appointment under the Biden administration makes her the first person in American history to lead the three most powerful economic bodies in the Federal government of the United States: the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

All eyes will be on Yellen after her appointment, as the Biden administration prepares to try to push through a major new Covid-19 stimulus package.