Yellen Confirmed As Biden’s Treasury Secretary Pick

Update (1500ET): Just as expected, WSJ has confirmed, according to people familiar with the decision, Joe Biden plans to nominate former Fed Chair Janet Yellen, an economist at the forefront of policy-making for three decades, to become the next Treasury secretary.

“There is a huge amount of suffering out there. The economy needs the spending,” Ms. Yellen said in a Sept. 28 interview.

If confirmed by the Senate, Ms. Yellen would become the first woman to hold the job.

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While Joe Biden is busy filling up his cabinet with distinguished members of Obama’s deep state ensuring years of warfare, at least one presidential coup in a Russia-neighboring nation and record prices for offense defense stocks, the only question that matters for traders is who head Biden’s Treasury secretary.

Here, a surprising reversal has taken place, because contrary to previous reports that Fed governor, and prominently political Clinton supporter, Lael Brainard was set to replace Steve Mnuchin, Charlie Gasparino reported that according to a Joe Biden adviser, Yellen has now leapfrogged both Brainard (and Roger Ferguson) to become the most likely candidate to head the Treasury: “Shes liked by banks, OK with progressives and easily confirmed.”

And in the worst news for Neel Kashkari whose ambitions to become the next Fed chair are hardly a secret, Gasparino notes that Lael “will be kept at the Fed where she can replace Powell at some pt.”

BREAKING from top Wall Street @JoeBiden adviser on how Janet Yellen leapfrogged Lael Brainard, Roger Ferguson to likely run Biden’s @USTreasury: “Shes liked by banks, OK with progressives and easily confirmed. Plus we keep Lael at the Fed where she can replace Powell at some pt.”

— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) November 23, 2020

And just minutes later, Bloomberg confirmed, reporting that “Lael Brainard has been told by allies of President-elect Joe Biden that she needs to stay at the central bank.”

Also confirming the bad news for Kashkari, Bloomberg notes that “Brainard is the only Democrat on a Fed board filled mostly by President Donald Trump’s appointments, and she may be a leading candidate for Fed chair when Jerome Powell’s term expires in 2022.”

In other words, some time in 2022 the five most important financial and political posts in the world – the US Treasury, The Fed, the ECB and the IMF – will be headed by women. The fifth? Why president Kamala Harris who will replace Joe Biden sometime in the next 6-12 months. One can only hope that there is no historic market crash and/r bubble burst in the coming years, because women will never hear the end of it.