Biden’s Cabinet Picks, Part 1: Janet Yellen

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

Today: As President-elect Joe Biden assembles his cabinet, his most high profile appointments are beginning to give us a picture of the direction and ambition of his presidency. To start, I spoke with my colleague, Jeanna Smialek, about Biden’s choice of a Treasury Secretary in the midst of a new financial crisis.

It’s Tuesday, December 1.

Jeanna, you cover economics for The Times, which is why we want to talk to you about Joe Biden’s choice for Treasury secretary, which is Janet Yellen. And I want to start by asking you how important you think the job of Treasury secretary is going to be in this incoming presidential administration, given the situation that she will be walking into.

I think it’s honestly hard to overstate how important this job is going to be. The Treasury secretary is the person who liaises with Congress over fiscal spending packages. And so, I think her role in negotiating with what looks quite possibly like a Republican Senate is going to be really crucial in shaping both the size and the scope of the next government spending package and the ongoing relief to this coronavirus pandemic. And then I think she’s also going to be a really important voice in talking about what kind of reforms need to be made coming out of this crisis. But at that moment, we’re going to have to talk about how financial regulation responds and how government spending packages should be shaped going forward. And I think on all of those issues, Janet Yellen is going to really be the voice at the forefront.

So when it comes to the economy, she will be the single most important person in the Biden administration?

I would say yes. From a political standpoint, she will be the most important person to sort of form the first line of defense for the economy against the ongoing effects of this pandemic recession.

So what should we know about Janet Yellen and how she arrives on Biden’s radar? Where does that story start?

Janet Yellen was kind of a wonk from birth. So I think you kind of have to go back to sort of her roots to talk about how this story started.

You know, she’s born in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, so a middle-class neighborhood in Brooklyn. She is the child of a teacher who stayed home to raise her and a doctor. She was class valedictorian, editor of her school newspaper. She once quite famously interviewed herself for…