THE NEXT FED CHAIR ... YOU MAKE THE CALL

Who will replace out-going Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke?

There are currently two front runners, Larry Summers and Janet Yellen. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich knows both and provides the following review on his Facebook page:

Word in Washington is President Obama will nominate either Janet Yellen or Larry Summers to be the next Fed chief. It's not quite as important a decision as a Supreme Court nomination but it's a very big one: The Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is the single most important economic player in the United States. So who would be best -- Yellen or Summers? I know both fairly well. Janet Yellen has impeccable credentials. She's now vice-chairman of the Fed, after having been head of the San Francisco branch of the Fed, and before that, an economics professor at Berkeley. In 2007 she was one of the very few voices sounding the alarm about the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Not incidentally, she's also a delightful person. Those who have worked with her tell me she listens carefully to all views, and is respectful of her employees. If selected, she'd be the first woman to head the Fed.

I worked with Larry Summers in the Clinton administration, where he eventually became Treasury Secretary. Under Obama, he ran the National Economic Council. Personally, I like Larry. He's very bright, and able to see the nub of most policy problems very quickly. But he has the tact and personality of a bull in a China shop, and he's been notoriously wrong about a few big things. In the late 1990s, he urged Clinton to sign off on legislation killing off Glass-Steagall, and was also part of the Rubin-Greenspan cabal that rejected the arguments of Brooksley Born, then chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, for why the CFTC should regulate financial derivatives. Summers' subsequent tenure as president of Harvard came to an end after he suggested one reason women were not well-represented in the sciences is they don't have the mind for it. As chair of the National Economic Council under Obama, he and Tim Geithner, then Treasury Secretary, bailed out Wall Street while refusing to impose tough conditions on the banks.

So, if you were the President, who would you nominate?

So, who would you pick? I know who I would pick. The decision is not a difficult one.

- Mark