U.S. President Barack Obama officially nominated Janet Yellen as the next Federal Reserve Chairman today (Wednesday).
Dow and S&P 500 futures immediately jumped late Tuesday on news the nomination was coming. A vote for Yellen suggests continuity, not change.
As Chief Investment Strategist Keith Fitz-Gerald has said, "Yellen has never met a printing press she didn't like."
Markets ended slightly higher Wednesday, with the Dow closing up 26.45 points, or 0.2%, and the S&P 500 up nearly 1 point, or almost 0.1%.
"The markets are finding consolation in Yellen's expected nomination because that at least puts monetary policy on a more certain, or at least, a more familiar path," Anastasia Amoroso, Global Market Strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds in New York, told Reuters. "It does remove another hurdle, another piece of the puzzle, another piece of uncertainty that the market likes to see resolved."
Fed Vice-Chairman since 2010, when President Obama nominated her to the post, 67-year-old Yellen will be the first woman in the central bank's storied history to hold the No. 1 job.
Yellen is expected to win bipartisan support for her new position in the Democratic-controlled Senate (54-46) and secure the 60 votes needed.
However, a handful of Republicans could object.
U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-TN, who voted against her appointment as vice-chairman because of "her dovish views on monetary policy," expressed concerns Tuesday night about her nomination for the job.
"We will closely examine her record since that time," said Corker, a member of the Banking Committee, which must clear Yellen's nomination before it goes before the full Senate. "But I am not aware of anything that demonstrates her views have changed."
Here's more on who Janet Yellen is and what she would bring to the job.
Who Is Janet Yellen?
First, some history on Janet Yellen...
A native of Brooklyn, Yellen graduated summa cum laude from Brown University with a degree in economics in 1967. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Yale University in 1971.
Yellen was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2004 to 2010. She also had stints as a White House adviser, a Fed governor during the Clinton administration, and she spent a good part of her career as a professor at the University of California, Berkley.
Married to George Akerlof, whom she met in 1977 when both were economists at the Fed board and married in June 1978, Yellen has co-authored a number of papers with her Noble Prize- winning economist husband.
She is also one of the Fed's wealthiest members, according to annual financial disclosures, released by the Fed in April. Yellen had investments worth some $4.8 million in 2012.
Now here are four things that answer who Janet Yellen will be as the next Fed chief:
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I would like an explanation of why Yellen believes the Fed could continue QE through 2015 without inflationary concerns. At $85 billion a month, this would mean roughly another $2.3 trillion in monetary base. What will the Feds balance sheet look like by then? They are playing with fire. The longer they continue the stimulus, and the more monetary base there is, the more difficult it will become to keep the genie in the bottle, so to speak. If they cannot control it any longer, and the right economic circumstances occur, this massive new monetary base could ignite some wicked inflation in the future.