Bitcoin Critic Janet Yellen Is Biden's Pick for Treasury Secretary
2 min read
President-elect Joe Biden is set to nominate former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary, The Wall Street Journal is reporting.
If confirmed, Yellen, who led the Federal Reserve from February 2014 to February 2018, would take over from current Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
She’d oversee 12 separate offices, including Economic Policy, Tax Policy, and the Office of Financial Stability (OFS). The OFS is perhaps the most important one to watch, as it was created specifically to carry out the Troubled Asset Relief Program in October 2008 after the subprime mortgage crisis.
That, of course, was the same month that the Bitcoin white paper was published.
And, yes, Yellen has thoughts on Bitcoin. In October 2018, she said of Bitcoin, “I will just say outright I am not a fan.”
In a Congressional hearing, in December 2017, she she called it a “highly speculative asset” but pointed out that the Federal Reserve played little role in cryptocurrencies.
But the move to the Treasury Department would mean that Yellen, who has over a decade of experience crafting US monetary policy as a key cog in the Federal Reserve System, could soon be in charge of formulating the administration’s fiscal policy.
Yellen backed Congressional spending during the pandemic, calling the $2.2 trillion CARES Act “impressive” and urging that more be done to help the United States through the worst of COVID-19.
That suggests she would encourage President-elect Bident go further than President Trump authorized Secretary Mnuchin to go. Talks for a second stimulus stalled in early October, with President Trump then capping any relief package at $1.6 billion.
