If Joe Biden picks Janet Yellen as his Treasury Secretary, she will be the only person to have ever held all three of the most important economic policymaking positions in government: Fed Chair, CEA Chair, and Treasury Secretary.
G. William Miller is the only person right now to have been both Fed Chair & Treasury Secretary. Both Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke were CEA Chair before becoming Fed Chair.

Nobody has done the trifecta, though. At least not yet...
I like to imagine that Janet Yellen and her husband George Akerlof debate which of them has a more impressive CV. First female Fed Chair, and potentially the first female Treasury Secretary too vs the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Just an insane power couple.
It’s official: Yellen will be the first female Fed Chair, first female Treasury Secretary, and second female CEA Chair.

That’s not even mentioning her stints as a Fed Governor, Fed President, and Fed Vice Chair.

She’s the most experienced economic policymaker we’ve ever had.
Not that this was ever in question with a Biden administration, but a Yellen Treasury in particular should do an excellent job of working with Powell’s Fed to support the economy, even after Mnuchin has rather blatantly tried to sabotage things.
What's the secret of a good marriage? According to Janet Yellen's husband, Nobel Prize-winning economist George Akerlof, part of it is that "Not only did our personalities mesh perfectly, but we have also always been in all but perfect agreement about macroeconomics." Image

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Matt O'Brien

Matt O'Brien Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @ObsoleteDogma

13 Nov
It's probably not too surprising, but it's still striking how much US & UK politics have mirrored each other the last 40 years: laissez-faire with Reagan & Thatcher, Third Way-ism with Clinton & Blair, right-wing nationalism with Trump & Brexit...
... and left-wing populism as a possible antidote to that right-wing nationalism with Bernie & Corbyn, both of whom were old-school socialists who resisted their parties' moves to the center in the 90s & found their parties coming back to them in 2016
The similarities broke down with the 2020 Democratic primaries, though. Instead of Bernie taking over the Dems like Corbyn did with Labour, Biden and the more moderate wing of the party did—and we were lucky they did
Read 15 tweets
4 Nov
Younger Dems tend to be frustrated with the way older Dems, who came of age during Reagan, operate out of a constant defensive crouch, and I get it. I am too. But younger Dems need to learn how to talk about policies the way some of those older Dems—Clinton, Obama, and, Biden—do
Younger Dems want to be more ambitious because the party is consistently strong on the national level. The problem, though, is that that isn't enough. The way the Senate & EC give disproportionate power to small, rural states means Dems have to win in conservative places too.
Older Dems understand how to sell a more active government to more moderate voters, i.e., "a hand up, not a hand out". Younger Dems tend to emphasize universal rights—to healthcare, education, etc.—that the government should guarantee. Totally different political dialects.
Read 9 tweets
1 Nov
Trump’s top covid adviser, a Fox News radiologist with no training in epidemiology who has been telling Trump that masks don’t work and to slow down testing, is insulting Fauci’s throwing arm after Fauci criticized him.

Meanwhile, the virus is spreading faster than ever.
Scott Atlas is a good reminder that a think tank named after one of the worst presidents in history—the Hoover Institution—doesn’t exactly have high, or any, standards.
Trump’s quack covid adviser, who he discovered on Fox News, went on the Kremlin’s propaganda channel today to spread his deranged ideas about the pandemic.

I’m not sure if that’s a step up or down from Fox News tbh.
Read 4 tweets
22 Oct
The EU’s second wave of coronavirus cases has now, in per capita terms, even passed our own.

The combination of pandemic fatigue & people gathering with friends & family indoors during the cold months is going to be very, very bad. It’s why our third wave is starting too.
The fact that already hard-hit countries like Spain, Italy, and Britain are seeing such big resurgences should put to rest the idea that we’re anywhere close to herd immunity
Belgium has the second-highest covid death toll, in per capita terms, in the world. It also has a massive outbreak right now that dwarfs anything we've seen. Herd immunity will not save us.
Read 4 tweets
10 Sep
The bottom line is that Trump knew the coronavirus was airborne back on February 7th, but has mocked or otherwise undermined the idea of wearing masks almost the entire time since.

This has likely cost tens and tens of thousands of lives.
How many lives might have been saved if Trump had mdae masks mandatory back in March?

Well, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia all did that then—they were the first European countries to do so—and their per capita death tolls are 7 to *85* times lower than ours. Image
Slovakia closed its borders, closed its schools and restaurants, and made masks mandatory—with its prime minister making a point of wearing one in public—within 10 days of identifying its first case.

We have 85x more per capita deaths than they do. theatlantic.com/international/… ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
9 Sep
“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump said on March 19th.

Mission accomplished, amirite. Image
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!