Senate Confirmed Yellen as Next Federal Reserve Chair

Yesterday the US Senate voted to confirm Janet Yellen as the next chair of the Federal Reserve. She will be the the first woman to head the US central bank.

Currently serving as vice-chair Yellen will take over after Chair Ben Bernanke steps down at the end of January.

Dr. Dave Kohl, Globetrotting Emeritus ag econ professor from Virginia Tech shares more details about what we can expect with Yellen as the Federal Reserve Chair.

Kohl: "Dr. Yellen has played a significant role on the Federal Open Markets Committee which determines interest rate and Federal Reserve direction. Her background is she was the head of the San Francisco Federal Reserve. One of the things about Dr. Yellen is that she is very data driven. And she will only make incremental changes only if the data such as unemployment, or inflation or growth of the GDP says that different directions will be taken."

Can we expect much change in the Feds direction when Yellen takes over? Dr. Kohl says

Kohl: "I would say that Dr. Yellen will be very similar to Dr. Bernanke. Again she will be data-driven and she will probably keep the stimulus going unless we see an uptick in inflation or unemployment drops dramatically or we see a uptick in Gross Domestic Product -- or GDP."