Assessing Yellen's Legacy.

• Author: McKinley, Vern

Yellen: The Trailblazing Economist Who Navigated an Era of Upheaval

By Jon Hilsenrath

400 pp.; Harper Business, 2022

The qualifications for U.S. treasury secretary are not well defined. The last two confirmed holders of this office had vastly different backgrounds and experience in assessing economic and financial public policy issues.

In my opinion, Stephen Mnuchin, Donald Trump's treasury secretary, had weak credentials for the position. He often seemed ill-prepared to discuss policy issues, particularly early in his tenure. The Wall Street Journal editorial page predicted that would be the case in December 2016, describing him as an "underwhelming" nominee who was a "newcomer to political or policy debates."

In contrast, current secretary Janet Yellen had decades of qualifying experience with many of the significant issues of domestic and international economic and financial policy. But as we look back on her long career, has she been on the right side of these policy discussions?

In his new book Yellen, Jon Hilsenrath, a senior writer for the Wall Street Journal, describes Yellen's views, her professional work, and her contributions to public policy over the past five decades. This is his first book.

Yellen is two biographies in one, as her husband, Nobel economics laureate George Akerlof, is also the focus of alternating and combined early chapters. Wouldn't you know it: Yellen endured sexism to become the first female Fed chair and treasury secretary in U.S. history and her husband's accomplishments consume much of her biography. Hilsenrath also explains that the economist power couple are so nerdy that they named their son after economist Robert Solow, "Akerlof's MIT mentor." The later chapters give biographical information on their son Robert, who also chose a career as an economist.

From Brooklyn to the Fed and Berkeley / Yellen's early years were spent in Brooklyn, an existence Hilsenrath describes thus: "The Yellen family wasn't rich, but they lived well.... On Sundays they dressed nicely and had a fancy meal out in Brooklyn or Manhattan.... They took [transatlantic] boat cruises for vacation and hired a housekeeper." Her father Julius, a doctor, told the family stories of his patients and "the Great Depression and the suffering it had imposed on people Ruth [Yellen's mother] and Julius knew when they were young."

Yellen graduated from Brown University's Pembroke College with a degree in economics, which included a course on central banking. This was during the 1960s, a period when scholars like Milton Friedman "were coming to realize at the time that the Fed had worsened and prolonged the Great Depression." A youthful Yellen thought, "If I ever have a chance at public service, a Fed post would be a worthwhile thing to do."

She...