Empathy Economics: Janet Yellen’s Remarkable Rise to Power and Her Drive to Spread Prosperity to All

Name: Empathy Economics: Janet Yellen’s Remarkable Rise to Power and Her Drive to Spread Prosperity to All
Price: 16.61 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Owen Ullmann
ISBN: 9781541701021

When President Biden announced Janet Yellen as his choice for secretary of the treasury, it was the peak moment of a remarkable life. Not only the first woman in the more than two-century history of the office, Yellen is the first person to hold all three top economic policy jobs in the United States: chair of both the Federal Reserve and the President’s Council of Economic Advisors as well as treasury secretary. Through Owen Ullmann’s intimate portrait, we glean two remarkable aspects of Yellen’s approach to economics: her commitment to putting those on the bottom half of the economic ladder at the center of economic policy, and her ability to maintain humanity in a Washington policy world where fierce political combat casts others as either friend or enemy, never more so than in our current age of polarization.

As Ullmann takes us through Yellen’s life and work, we clearly see her brilliance and meticulous preparation. What stands out, though, is Yellen as an icon of progress — the "Ruth Bader Ginsburg of economics" — a superb-yet-different kind of player in a cold, male-dominated profession that all too often devises policies to benefit the already well-to-do. With humility and compassion as her trademarks, we see the influence of Yellen’s father, a physician whose pay-what-you-can philosophy meant never turning anyone away. This is the trailblazing story of Yellen's lifelong advocacy for an economics of empathy that delivers the fruits of a prosperous society to people at the bottom half of the economic ladder.