美國總統歐巴馬將於10月9日下午宣佈，決定任命美國聯邦儲備委員會（FRB）副主席珍妮特•耶倫（67歲）接任將於2014年1月底結束任期的FRB主 席伯南克。耶倫將成為美聯儲100年歷史中的首位女性主席。耶倫作為重視創造就業崗位的「鴿派」人物廣為熟知，被視為將沿襲伯南克推行的現行貨幣寬鬆路 線。
美國媒體8日紛紛報導了上述消息。就任FRB主席必須獲得美國議會參議院的批准，不過民主黨內支持耶倫的人眾多，而民主黨在參議院中佔多數席位，因此估計 將順利獲得通過。FRB主席的任期為4年，由於06年2月就任FRB主席、目前為第2任期的伯南克不願繼續連任，歐巴馬一直在物色人選。
經濟學者出身的耶倫于2010年秋季作為前FRB副主席科恩的繼任者就任副主席一職。耶倫曾在格林斯潘任職FRB主席時擔任過FRB理事，並在克林頓執政 時擔任過總統經濟顧問委員會（CEA）委員長等職位。包括FRB理事、舊金山聯邦儲備銀行行長等職務在內，耶倫在FRB工作了10多年。
耶倫從學者時代便開始研究失業問題，重視在美國創造就業崗位，並支持金融危機後FRB推行的量化寬鬆等積極的金融政策。多數觀點認為，在失業率高時，允許一定程度的物價上漲的現行金融政策框架不會發生太大變化。
（藤井章夫 華盛頓報導）
Yellen to Be Named Fed Chairman, First Female Chief
By Cheyenne Hopkins & Joshua Zumbrun -
2013-10-09T01:16:31Z
Obama will announce the nomination at 3 p.m. tomorrow, a White House official said in an e-mailed statement. Yellen, 67, would succeed Ben S. Bernanke, whose term expires on Jan. 31.
Obama turned to Yellen, vice chairman of the Fed since 2010, after the other leading candidate, former Treasury secretary and White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers, withdrew from consideration amid mounting opposition from Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat, pledged to work with the committee “to move her nomination forward in a timely manner.”
“She has a depth of experience that is second to none,” Johnson said in a statement. He also thanked Bernanke for “his incredible service our country” during “one of the most turbulent economic times in our nation’s history.”
U.S. index futures climbed, signaling stocks may rebound from the biggest loss since August, and Treasuries rose after the announcement.
Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures added 0.2 percent by 9:55 a.m. in Tokyo, after the U.S. benchmark lost more than 2 percent over the past two days. Five-year Treasury yields fell three basis points.
Public Contest
The president’s choice followed a polarizing and unprecedented public contest for a nomination that Obama described in August as one of the most important decisions of his presidency.Yellen was the favorite in surveys of economists and had the backing of 20 members of the Senate Democratic caucus who signed a July 26 letter to Obama.
As a top deputy to Bernanke, Yellen supported the central bank’s unprecedented bond buying programs and was a driving force behind a new strategy adopted in 2012 to commit the central bank to goals on inflation and unemployment.
“It’s hard to imagine a better choice by virtue of intelligence, temperament, demonstrated good judgment, understanding of the Fed, and extensive experience,” said Alan Blinder, a Princeton University professor and former Fed Vice Chairman. “She should make a great Fed chair.”
Asset Purchases
As the Fed’s No. 2 official, she has articulated the case for maintaining highly accommodative monetary policy. In a series of 2012 speeches, she outlined why interest rates could remain near zero into late 2015, and in a 2011 speech she justified the Fed’s first two rounds of large-scale asset purchases with an estimate that the programs would create 3 million jobs.“She’s even more of a dove than Bernanke is, but there’s nobody who can say she’s not credentialed because of the range of experience she’s got,” said J. Alfred Broaddus, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond who debated Yellen over the Fed’s mandates during the 1990s. “She has experience that almost nobody else can bring to the table at this point.”
Among Yellen’s tasks, if confirmed, will be to execute the unwinding of the Fed’s record monetary stimulus. Bernanke has said the central bank won’t end monthly bond purchases until the labor market shows sign of substantial improvement.
The Fed has also announced plans to hold short-term interest rates near zero until the unemployment rate reaches at least 6.5 percent.
San Francisco
A member of the Fed’s board of governors and chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration, Yellen later was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco before Obama nominated her to the No. 2 job at the Fed in 2010.As Fed vice chairman, Yellen’s attentiveness to the district Fed presidents proved invaluable in building consensus on policy issues.
When the Federal Open Market Committee gathers in Washington for monetary policy decisions, Yellen often has breakfast with one district bank president, then sits down with another, before the meeting starts in the morning, her appointment calendars show. That familiarity with her colleagues would probably make her an adept manager of the central bank, said Robert Eisenbeis, a former Atlanta Fed research director.
Understands Culture
“She’s steeped in the culture,” said Eisenbeis, now chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors in Sarasota, Florida. “Nobody understands the culture from the many perspectives that she’s had.”She took control of a subcommittee focused on the Fed’s communication challenges. For years, policy makers on the FOMC had been unable to agree to holding press conferences or spelling out goals for inflation and unemployment.
Yellen’s subcommittee met almost as often as the FOMC -- 15 times in person and via telephone in 2011 and 2012 -- according to her calendars. The meetings culminated in a breakthrough in policy: A January 2012 statement that committed the central bank to achieving inflation of 2 percent in the longer term and spelled out a goal of 5.2 percent to 6 percent for the unemployment rate.
Yale Degree
Yellen earned her Ph.D. in economics at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, studying under future Nobel laureates James Tobin and Joseph Stiglitz. She graduated in 1971 and became an assistant professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Her road to the top of the central bank began in 1976 after she failed to get tenure at Harvard. She moved to Washington and took a job as a staff economist in the Fed’s division of international affairs.
There she met her husband, George Akerlof, and together they went to the London School of Economics and then the University of California at Berkeley.
They specialized in the labor market and were co-authors of more than a dozen papers that delved into the mechanics of how people switch jobs and what it means when workers perceive their wages as unfair.
In 1994, Yellen and Akerlof’s career paths diverged. While he went on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, Yellen was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the Fed’s board of governors.
Clinton Adviser
She served as the chairman of Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1997 to 1999, a period of economic boom when the unemployment rate was under 5 percent, the U.S. was running budget surpluses and Yellen was making speeches on a strategy to use the savings to help shore up Social Security.Yellen returned to Berkeley in 1999, leaving again in 2004 to become president of the San Francisco Fed.
“She assures continuity on the one hand and on the other hand is exquisitely qualified,” said Nathan Sheets, chief international economist at Citigroup Inc. in New York, who previously served as the top international economist at the Fed. “I don’t know if there’s ever been a Federal Reserve chairman with a broader set of credentials.”
When Yellen became vice chairman of the Fed in 2010, she passed the Senate Banking Committee with a vote of 17-6, providing a preview of what her confirmation process could look like. There are 12 Democrats and 10 Republicans on the Banking Committee.
Senator Bob Corker, one of the top Republicans on the banking committee, said Yellen’s record will come under scrutiny.
‘Dovish’ Views
“I voted against Vice Chairman Yellen’s original nomination to the Fed in 2010 because of her dovish views on monetary policy,” Corker, of Tennessee, said in a statement today. “We will closely examine her record since that time, but I am not aware of anything that demonstrates her views have changed.”Yellen became San Francisco Fed president in June 2004, well before house prices collapsed. Home prices were rising at an annual pace of more than 15 percent from May 2004 to December 2005, according to the Case-Shiller (SPCS20Y%) index of home prices in 20 cities.
Transcripts from meetings of the central bank in 2007, not released until earlier this year, show that Yellen was among the first Fed policy makers to warn how severe the housing situation was becoming.
Home Prices
At the May 2007 FOMC meeting, Yellen expressed concern that the Fed staff’s forecast was too optimistic on home prices. The forecast “assumes that national house prices are flat going forward,” she said. “I am worried that they may actually fall.”At the next meeting, on June 27-28, Yellen said the biggest risk to economic growth was housing, which she called the “600-pound gorilla in the room.”
“The risk for further significant deterioration in the housing market, with house prices falling and mortgage delinquencies rising further, causes me appreciable angst,” Yellen said. “Rising defaults in subprime could spread to other sectors of the mortgage market and could trigger a vicious cycle.”
開市焦點:2萬3角力 留意葉倫效應
港股近日反覆在23000點爭持，大市受美股及內地股市走勢所牽引，市傳現任美聯儲副主席葉倫即將正式獲美國總統奧巴馬提名為下任聯儲局主席，投資者宜留意市場反應，預料恒指繼續在23000點附近好淡角力。
華府停運已進入第二周，國債上限僵局未有跡象可以達成協議，總統奧巴馬及共和黨的眾議院議長博納互不相讓。隔晚美股近全日低位收市，道指跌159 點，收報14776.53，為8月27日來的最低水平，且跌至200天平均線水平，為2012年底首次，短期若明顯失守該均線，技術走勢將進一步轉差。雖 然大部分投資者認為技術違約的風險很低，但隨著提高國債上限的死線逐漸迫近，機構投資者先行趁機獲利。
另方面，今早外電報道，白宮官員稱，奧巴馬將在當地時間周三下午3時，宣布提名葉倫(Janet Yellen)擔任聯儲局主席。道指期貨今早向好，最新報14755，升41點，由於市場普遍認定葉倫為通貨膨脹的鴿派，將傾向支持維持量化寬鬆(QE) 政策。不過，較早前當薩默斯意外宣布退出角逐聯儲局主席之後，市場已預期葉倫將很大機會當選聯儲局主席。投資者今日仍需密切留意道指期貨以及標普指數期貨 之表現。另外，市場亦關注聯儲局將於今晚公布上次議息會議紀要。
ADR港股比例指數收報22920，較周二本港收市低258點或1.13%。滙控(00005)ADR收報82.95元，低0.85元或1.01%。恒指昨日重上23000點，收市升204點，報23178點，沽空成交比率微升至8.4%。
焦點板塊
科網股：納斯達克指數隔晚急挫2%，Facebook重挫逾6%，在美國上市的中國科網股包括新浪、網易及百度均見受壓，留意今日本港上市的科網及軟件股或借勢回吐。
焦點股份
吉利汽車(00175)：銷售文件顯示，高盛正配售吉利5.78億股，每股配售價介乎4.1元至4.23元，較昨日收市價4.41元，折讓 4.08%至7.03%，套現最多24.5億元。吉利近期股價表現強勢，短期或借高盛減持消息，回調至10天線(目前約4.2元)水平。
