Janet Yellen made her first appearance before Congress since assuming the chair of the Federal Reserve Board and produced the yawns she was seeking, even thanking several of her interlocutors for calling her “unexciting.” Knowing that some Fed critics are seeking to rein in the bank’s independence (several of these critics would like to eliminate the Fed entirely), Yellen offered to stay for as long as necessary—six hours, as it turned out—in the hope that demonstrating such heightened transparency will head off legislation to politicize the central bank. The examples of Japan and Britain, where the central bankers have become aligned with Prime Minister Shinzō Abe and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, respectively, apparently do not appeal to her.
She won nods of approval for using simple sentences rather than the more opaque and convoluted structures preferred by her predecessors. Republican congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito thanked her, “I’ve understood more of what you’ve said today than I have probably [from] the last two folks that were in front of us.”
