about the event.
“Everyone [in the government community] knows
that Yellen is a liberal Democrat, but that really shouldn’t
influence her job as Federal Reserve chair,” commented
N. Gregory Mankiw, former economic adviser to George
W. Bush and then-chair of the Harvard economics depart-
ment, to the Harvard Political Review.
Months later, Yellen, who appears to skew much closer
to the center of the political spectrum than the far left,
reported to Congress to deliver her semiannual monetary
policy report. But she found that Republicans were still
focused on her remarks in Boston.
“You’re sticking your nose in places that you have no
business to be,” scolded future Trump chief of staff Mick
Mulvaney, then a Republican representative from South
Carolina. Rep. Sean Duffy, a Republican from Wisconsin
and former cast member of MTV’s The Real World, ac-
cused her of political bias.
A visibly rattled Yellen defended her position. “I am not
making political statements,” she said. “I am discussing a
significant problem that faces America.”
She didn’t see what she was saying as anything but data-
driven analysis. And anyway, “it had been a topic I’d ad-
dressed on a number of occasions before,” she tells Fortune.
Yellen experienced a rare setback in 2018 when then-
President Donald Trump essentially axed her and replaced“PERSONNEL IS policy,”
says a Washington maxim
invoked at the dawn of each
new administration. The
point is valid; you don’t re-
ally understand policy until
you know who’s creating it
and executing it. President
Biden’s economic team, still
being assembled, reflects
the forces shaping today’s
Democratic Party. “The staff-
ing really runs the gamut
from very centrist Democrats
to people who come much
more from the left,” says Stan
Veuger, a Washington-based
economist at the American
Enterprise Institute and an
economics lecturer at Har-
vard. In addition to Treasury
Secretary Janet Yellen, here
are top power players on
Biden’s economic team.
Brian Deese, director
of the National Economic
Council. Just 42, and not a
trained economist, Deese
nonetheless held high-level
economic posts throughout
the Obama administration,
including deputy director of
the Office of Management
and Budget and deputy direc-
tor of the National Economic
Council, which manages the
President’s economic deci-
sion process. “If you have
a strong White House, the
person who organizes the
meetings, the presentations,
and what will be presented
to the President has a lot of
power,” says the Brookings
Institution’s David Wessel. “I
think he will be that person.”
Jared Bernstein, member
of the Council of Economic
Advisers. Bernstein’s power
is greater than his title sug-
gests. He won’t outrank other
CEA members, but he’s al-
ready one of the administra-
tion’s most influential figures
because of his long and close
relationship with Biden. In
the Obama administration
he was chief economist to
then–Vice President Biden.
Bernstein is decidedly left
of center but not over on the
Bernie Sanders fringe.
Rohit Chopra, director
of the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau (pend-
ing Senate confirmation).
Amped up regulation of the
financial services industry
looks to be a significant trend
in the Biden administration.
Treasury Secretary Janet
Yellen has said she thinks
the Dodd-Frank law doesn’t
go far enough, and Chopra’s
record suggests he’ll be an
energetic regulator. Attorney
Lucy Morris, who served
with Chopra at the CFPB
in its early days, writes, “I
anticipate that he will be at
least as aggressive as former
director [Richard] Cordray,
if not more,” a prospect that
may chill the blood of Wall
Street executives. Since May
2018 Chopra has been on the
Federal Trade Commission.
Other top power positions
haven’t been filled as of this
writing, but whoever takesthem will play important
roles in executing Biden’s
economic policies. Two of the
most important:
Assistant Attorney Gen-
eral for Antitrust. The Trump
Justice Department was more
active on antitrust than many
would have expected under
a Republican President.
The Biden administration
could be even more active.
Candidate Biden said the
tech giants wield too much
power, a view with bipartisan
support. The Trump DOJ last
year sued Google on antitrust
grounds, joined by 14 states,
both red and blue. Biden’s
choice of an antitrust chief
will signal what’s ahead for
Silicon Valley and potentially
other industries.
Comptroller of the Cur-
rency. A low-profile post, it’s
crucially important in the
regulation of national banks,
including the biggest ones:
JPMorgan Chase, Bank of
America, Citigroup, and Wells
Fargo. If increased financial
regulation becomes a Biden
priority, as many expect,
the holder of this job will be
highly influential.
As for the policy that the
Biden economic team will
be executing: At its highest
level, it’s driven partly by the
circumstances of the mo-
ment and partly by shared
deep beliefs. The most
immediate imperative, man-
aging the pandemic crisis,
is more about competencethan ideology. “If Elizabeth
Warren or Bernie Sanders
had become President, they
would still have to deal first
and foremost with just crisis
management,” says Veuger.
Beyond the pandemic, the is-
sues at the top of the team’s
to-do list are infrastructure,
climate, inequality, and
raising taxes. Biden and the
team will pursue an activist
agenda based on their view
that today’s ultralow interest
rates—negative after infla-
tion—present “a once-in-a-
generation opportunity to
make huge public invest-
ments that will pay off in
higher living standards for
the next generation,” says
Wessel.
That view fits well with a
broader, deeper view of how
to strengthen the overall
economy. Wessel says, “If
you got all the economic
team of the Biden adminis-
tration in a room and asked
them, ‘Do you think that
investments in pre-K educa-
tion and more aid for young
children and low-income
families can increase not only
their prospects of moving
into the middle class, but can
also increase the productivity
growth of the United States?’
I think they would say yes.”
Having hit the trifecta of
controlling the White House
plus both houses of Con-
gress, Biden, his team, and
their party now have a rare
opportunity to test that belief.WHAT COMES NEXT : THE ECONOMY