Obama to nominate Yellen as head of Federal Reserve Board

Announcement likely to be made by Obama at the White House today

US President Barack Obama is expected to nominate Janet Yellen as head of the Federal Reserve Board, White house has said.     

If confirmed by the Senate, she would replace Ben Bernanke as Chair of the Federal Reserve Board. The announcement in this regard is likely to be made by Obama at the White House today, according to a White House official.     

Yellen is currently Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, a role to which she was appointed in October 2010. Prior to joining the Board, Yellen spent much of her career at the University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business, where she is Professor Emerita.     

She began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1980 and till 2010 she held a series of other positions, most recently as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2004 to 2010.     

She also previously served as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1997 to 1999 and as a Governor of the Federal Reserve Board from 1994 to 1997. Prior to teaching at UC Berkeley, she was a Lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science from 1978 to 1980, an economist with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 1977 to 1978, and an assistant professor at Harvard from 1971 until 1976.     

She earned a BA in economics from Brown University and a PhD in economics from Yale University. "Her nomination would mean the Fed is unlikely to make any unusual lurches in its interest-rate decisions in the near-term. But she would have a number of vexing challenges almost immediately," The Wall Street Journal reported.       

As chairwoman, she would lead a divided committee of 19 policy makers, a number of whom doubt whether the bond-buying program is doing much good and worry that the Fed portfolio of $3.5 trillion in Treasury and mortgage securities is getting dangerously large, the financial daily said.