Fed’s Yellen lands new job at Washington think tank

WASHINGTON – Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, the first woman to head the nation’s central bank, got a boisterous send-off from Fed staff, but she isn’t taking any time off. After her last day at the Fed on Friday, she will start a new job Monday at the Brookings Institution.

The Washington think tank announced that Yellen will be joining the institution’s Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy as a distinguished fellow in residence. One of her colleagues will be her predecessor, former chairman Ben Bernanke, who joined Brookings in 2014 when he stepped down from the Fed.

In an interview on her last day, Yellen said for the first time publicly that she was disappointed that President Donald Trump did not nominate her for a second term. She is the first Fed leader not to be given the chance to serve a second term in four decades.

“I would have liked to serve an additional term and I did make that clear” when she interviewed with Trump, Yellen said in an interview broadcast by PBS. “So I would say I was disappointed not to be re-appointed.”

But Yellen said that she was grateful for the Fed career she did have which covered not only a four-year term as Fed chair but also serving as Fed vice chair for four years before that and also service as president of the Fed’s San Francisco regional bank.