It's Yellen. Now What?

Federal Reserve Board Vice Chair and nominee for chairman, Janet Yellen

Here The Wall Street Journal points out Janet Yellen’s weakness on inflation, something I’ve been talking about for a while.

And in 1995 she said during a debate on inflation targeting that “when the goals conflict and it comes to calling for tough trade-offs, to me, a wise and humane policy is occasionally to let inflation rise even when inflation is running above target.” This helps to explain why, even in the Bernanke era, Ms. Yellen has often pushed behind the scenes for even more aggressive bond purchases.

Ms. Yellen’s defenders says she really isn’t a dove and they point to her 2006 warning about a housing bubble and its risks for the larger economy. Full marks for that. But the problem is that by 2006 the mortgage-securities and housing bubbles were so large and distended that substantial economic harm was inevitable. The time for the Fed to have begun tightening was in 2003 and 2004 when it was keeping interest rates at 1%-2% even as the economy was growing by nearly 4% a year and commodity prices were exploding. Ms. Yellen was no great public dissenter from that historic Greenspan-Bernanke mistake.

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E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

Preparing your investments and family for when disaster strikes.

E.J. Smith is the Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH, where he completed course-work in Practical and Defensive Handgun, Conceal Carry Pistol, Shotguns, Precision Scope Rifle and Kidnapping Prevention. E.J. plays a Yamaha Recording Custom drum set with Zilldjian cymbals. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zilldjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@youngresearch.com. Sign up here to receive all the best content from Richardcyoung.com each week.