Janet Yellen Quotes
Our objective in regulation should be to put in place tough enough regulation and capital and liquidity standards that we level the playing field and make it costly.
Yellen, Janet L. Testimony before the Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives. U.S. Government Publishing Office, 4 Nov. 2015.
This quotation is particularly interesting in it shows how far partisanship and ideology can go into deluding political perception. Wallinson is a man of integrity who we must assumed believed what he said. Yet in the 30 years he referred to, most had Republican Presidents and there were a number of Republican controlled Congresses. During all that time the Republican Party platform called for continuous deregulation. Every Republican President and even Democrat William Clinton has bragged about their success at deregulating the business and financial environment in America. During that period, left wingers paraded to testify to Congress that the deregulation policies and practices was in their view injuring the country, While there was great debate over the desirability of deregulation, virtually no elected politician of the left or right denied that deregulation was happening. The Chamber of Commerce during that time always complained that the deregulation was not occurring fast enough and consumer groups claimed the rate was too fast. Yet Wallinson instead of taking the position of most conservatives that the deregulation had little or nothing to do with the Financial Crisis of 2008, actually convinced himself that there had been no deregulation. Human perception of political reality can be easily altered by ideology. Similar delusions have also occurred for left wingers. It is the ideology who is vulnerable regardless of what the ideology is.
He was referring to Fannie Mae, the government-created. private mortage guarantee company. It was heavily regulated, and in general it met the regulatory requirements. However, the requirements were insufficient, and in the 2008 Meltdown and the Great Recession that followed, Fannie Mae itself was in such bad financial condition, that the Federal Government had bail them out or have the entire home mortgage industry fall apart.
Janet Louise Yellen is an American economist, civil servant and policymaker serving as the United States secretary of the treasury since January 26, 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the 15th chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018. She is the first woman to hold either role. She is also a professor emerita at Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and formerly a distinguished fellow in residence at the Brookings Institution.
