Janet Yellen is an icon waiting to happen. With her signature silver bob, single-strand pearl necklace, and seemingly infinite supply of jewel-toned jackets (collar popped, always), it’s easy to imagine the new Treasury secretary’s image emblazoned on T-shirts and her silhouette outlined on inspirational Instagram posts. She’s a natural fit as an emblem of the #Girlboss movement that has so finely boiled down modern feminism into a shallow yet marketable vestige of unadulterated capitalism—a conceit used to describe the relentless rise-and-grind schedules of business leaders like Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg, and to help sell “Notorious RBG” merch to young women. Yellen’s Q score with Gen Y should soon be on the rise.
On Wall Street, meanwhile, Yellen is seen as a known quantity. The former Fed chair is someone who doesn’t make surprise decisions—who says what she’s going to do and then does just that. Big Finance is optimistic that she’ll be a business-oriented leader at Treasury and a friend to markets. That confidence is only bolstered by the fact that Yellen collected more than $7 million in speaking fees from the likes of Goldman Sachs and hedge fund Citadel since leaving the Fed two years ago—a revelation that stirred a bit of controversy among Democrats.
Progressives like to think of Yellen as an advocate for underrepresented Americans. They see her as someone who will push for a higher minimum wage, more regulation of shadow banking, and new legislation in the mode of DoddFrank to protect consumers. To liberals, Yellen is someone who will at last put the guardrails on Wall Street.
This story is from the April 2021 edition of Fortune India.
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This story is from the April 2021 edition of Fortune India.
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