The sudden droop in the stockmarkets made me wonder this morning. What is going on? What has happened while I was asleep? A quick look through online newspapers was reassuring, though. It was only Janet Yellen’s debut at the helm of the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank. Phew! As The Wall Street Journal reports, the debut has rattled markets. Investors have bristled at Yellen who has come up with some unsettling signals about the central bank’s outlook for short-term interest rates. The Financial Times is equally damning. Confused delivery muddles the Fed’s message, the newspaper reports blithely. But it adds that signs from her that have unsettled markets may not mean much. Oops! In short, she botched up her debut. Out of the blue, I felt kind of sorry for the first chairwoman of the Fed. Although the newspapers are quiet about the gender issue, as they should be, the underlying sentiments are clear enough. What else could one expect from a woman? But Yellen’s second performance will be much more reassuring, I am sure. If not, she will get the hang of it quickly enough. The only mystery in my reaction is my unexpected benevolence toward women. What the hell is wrong with me? Women are only human, after all.

Addendum (December 23, 2014)

I just came across an article about Yellen’s first year at the Fed, and in The New York Times of all newspapers. “A remarkably steady course,” blares the title. The byline is quite laudatory, as well: “Though the approach of Janet Yellen, the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, has hewed closely to her predecessor’s, central bank officials and outside experts expect changes next year.” All in all, she has hardly deviated from Ben Bernanke’s lead, pernicious as it was. If anything has driven up the growing inequality both in the States and across the globe, it has been the relentless quantitative easing initiated and promoted by Bernanke. And Yellen has stuck to it for a bit more than three quarters already. Women are only human, as I already said.