Yellen has had a smooth ride ahead of the nomination process because of the unwavering support of the anyone-but-Summers camp.
It’s tough to rail against Yellen because no one wants to pick on someone who looks like their grandmother and is inches away from breaking the Fed’s grandest glass ceiling. In public, she’s also thoughtful, prepared and polite.
That said, there are reasons to be worried. If you love transparency, Yellen is a tough sell. At Fed meetings she’s famous for reading from a script and often described as methodical. Those are probably great qualities for a decision-making economist but in the current era the Fed is about show as much as substance and that won’t serve her well at the ever-more-frequent press conferences.
Where Bernanke comes to the Fed’s policy committee eight times a year and speaks extemporaneously from a couple of bullet points, Yellen drafts scripts of exactly what she will say, people who have been in the room said, and reads them word for word.
Today, the WSJ’s Jon Hilsenrath profiles Yellen and the reviews aren’t all positive.
Dick Anderson, who served a brief stint as the chief operating officer of the Fed’s Washington board, ending in December 2012, said, “Yellen’s abrasive, intimidating style is probably more suited for a ‘Mad Men’ era as opposed to a modern office environment.”
That someone would put his name on a criticism that harsh shows she can rub people the wrong way. Hilsenrath also described her as a ‘polarizing figure’.
