Why would anyone think it makes sense to nominate Rambo as Fed Chair?
by digby
There is a lot of chatter right now about the administration’s trial balloon about Larry Summers possibly being named Fed Chairman in the next few weeks. The bill of indictment against him is very long and should have been enough to keep him off anyone’s short list for this office. He is known as a friend to Wall Street, a protector of corrupt investors, a terrible manager, and early proponent of deregulation and generally a guy who had made far too many bad economic calls to be considered for such an important job. To me, you need to know nothing else to see that he is a very bad choice for the job.
But that’s not all of it, not by a long shot. The other person who is reportedly being considered is Janet Yellen, a thoroughly qualified person and one who carries none of the baggage that Summers has strapped to his back. As this piece by Josh Bivens shows:
[S]he has been far ahead of the policymakers’ curve when it comes to diagnosing macroeconomic trouble. Recently released minutes from Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meetings in December 2007 show that Yellen was nearly alone in warning that a recession was imminent—a warning that proved correct.
For another, it’s hard to imagine somebody more qualified and better-groomed for the job. She has served as Chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, has had previous stints on the Fed’s Board of Governors, has run the San Francisco Federal Reserve, and has been Vice-Chair of the Federal Reserve since 2010.
But the Wall Street faction of the Democratic Party seems to be convening their fellow Boys Club members to conduct a rather shocking whisper campaign against Yellen based upon the most sexist “concerns” you can imagine. As Ezra reported yesterday, they’re basically saying that Yellen isn’t macho enough:
The “but” is a variation on a theme. She lacks “toughness.” She’s short on “gravitas.” Too “soft-spoken” or “passive.” Some mused that she is not as aggressively brilliant or intellectually probing as other candidates — though they hasten to say she’s clearly very knowledgeable about monetary policy. Others have wondered whether she could handle the inevitable fights with Congress.
Requests for specifics don’t yield much. It’s more a feeling. An intuition. A sense. But these airy hunches are held by powerful people who will be involved, formally and otherwise, in the selection of Bernanke’s replacement.
What the complaints share is an implicit definition of leadership based on stereotypically male qualities. They aren’t qualities that all men have, or all women lack, but they’re qualities that tend to be more rewarded in men than in women, and thus more prevalent among men than women. And because every chairman of the Federal Reserve (as well as every Treasury secretary) has been male, such qualities have steadily, perhaps subconsciously, informed the portrait etched in many minds of high-level economic policy makers.
This generic portrait survives in part because monetary economics remains a bit of a boys’ club. “In the general finance world, and even in economics, there are tons of women,” said Christina Romer, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley and former chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. “But I’m lucky at monetary-economics conferences if I’m one of three women, and now that Anna Schwartz has died, if I’m one of two.”
He goes on to point out that Bernanke isn’t exactly Rambo and yet his reputation among these fine fellows couldn’t be better.
This is 100% Old Boy Network bullshit. If there is a job on this earth that requires careful deliberation, a calm prudent personality and a consensus building style it’s the Federal Reserve Chair. The skittish wild horses of the markets hang on every word and someone as undisciplined as Larry Summers — a man who was so reckless as to say that women aren’t good at math and science as the president of Harvard University for God’s sakes — is likely to set off a worldwide panic. The mere idea that this man whose reputation as an unruly blabbermouth would be more suited than this meticulous, circumspect woman is completely ridiculous. The last thing we should want is some cowboy with a big mouth as Fed Chairman.
I suspect President Obama wants a legacy of breaking down cultural barriers to opportunity and advancement for all Americans. It is very much a part of his central promise and he knows it. It will be a shameful act if President Obama names his good old boy buddy Summers instead of the more qualified woman Janet Yellen to this job. I think he’s smart enough to know that this is not the sort of image that great legacies make:
Also too: the last I heard the Democrats were gaming out elections based upon their huge advantage with women. It’s not as if he has to do us any favors here — just nominate the most qualified person for the job.
Update: Oy. Look who’s giving Summers a huge platform today.
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