AG百家乐在线官网

It is hard to know whether Wall Street has reacted positively to news that Janet Yellen is set to be appointed US Treasury secretary by Joe Biden or on relief that Mr Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump, appears finally to have accepted defeat.

The chances are - with the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting a record high of more than 30,000 points, and the S&P 500 coming close to one - that it is a bit of both.

Mr Trump's decision to begin the transition process removes a good deal of uncertainty that had been hanging over the markets while the appointment of 74-year-old Ms Yellen, assuming it is ratified by Congress, will leave the US economy in the hands of a vastly experienced operator.

Much has been made of the fact that Ms Yellen, who was the first woman to serve as chair of the US Federal Reserve, will be the first woman in 231 years to serve as US Treasury secretary.

More significant, in terms of her readiness for the job, is that she is the first person who will have served as Fed chair, US Treasury secretary and as head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. She is only the second Fed chair to become Treasury secretary although the first, G William Miller, was not conspicuously successful after being appointed by Jimmy Carter.

Ms Yellen's appointment by Mr Biden is shrewd in both a political and an economic sense.

With the US Senate likely to be controlled by the Republicans when Ms Yellen's appointment becomes due for ratification, the president-elect knew he had to appoint someone capable of attracting bipartisan support. Ms Yellen's appointment as Fed chair, in 2014, was supported by 11 Republican senators, three of whom remain in office and who may well support her appointment this time around.

Yet those on the left of the Democratic Party, who would have preferred a more radical figure such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, will find Ms Yellen a palatable choice, too, thanks to some of the speeches she has delivered since leaving the Fed on topics such as the need to address inequality and financial exclusion.

That is important: Tim Geithner, who was Barack Obama's first Treasury secretary, was mistrusted by the left of the Democratic Party which, in the wake of the financial crisis, suspected him of being keener to bail out the banks than he was on punishing badly-behaved bankers.

The left may also have noted with approval that Ms Yellen was passed over in 2018 for a second four-year term at the Fed when Mr Trump chose to appoint Jay Powell - whose life he subsequently made a misery.

Crucially, Brooklyn-born Ms Yellen is also someone with whom Wall Street can work, having presided over a boom in stock markets during her time at the Fed.

As Mike Mayo, senior banking analyst at the bank Wells Fargo, told CNBC: "She's not pro-bank or anti-bank, she's pro-growth, she's pro-employment.

"She is an economic recovery specialist. And she is a known quantity to Wall Street. We know her."

Mr Mayo said recent experience had thrown out the old theory that Democrat presidents were bad for banks and Republican presidents good for them, noting that the banking sector had fared better under Barack Obama than it had under George W Bush and Donald Trump.

Emblematic of Wall Street's warm response to news of her appointment was that Gary Cohn, president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs before serving as Mr Trump's chief economic adviser from 2017 to 2018, described Ms Yellen as an "excellent choice".

Tony Dwyer, analyst at the wealth manager Canaccord Genuity, added: "We see this as a strong choice.

"Janet Yellen has exceptional experience, knows how to print money, and should be instrumental in being able to negotiate a near-term fiscal package. The idea that a less market-friendly figure would be the nominee serves as another example that fear is typically worse than reality."

Ms Yellen will need every ounce of that experience. By common consensus, the US economy needs further fiscal stimulus, the size of which was the subject of a pre-election dispute between Mr Trump and the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.

Getting a deal that will satisfy Democrats and Republicans in the Senate will take deft footwork and especially as Ms Yellen has called in the recent past for extra support for local government, for unemployment insurance and specific support for workers who have lost their health insurance cover along with their jobs. Senate Republicans are more likely to push for more money for small businesses and for targeted support for sectors like aviation and hospitality that have been laid low by COVID-19.

More common ground may be found in areas like trade. Ms Yellen is supportive of free trade and is likely to be influential in restoring a more coherent approach to trade under Mr Biden than was the case under Donald Trump, who was not averse to announcing new tariffs on Twitter, much to the surprise and consternation of his advisers. Her time at the Fed has also helped her to build contacts with heads of state and policy-setters around the globe in a way that can only enhance relations between the US and its trade partners after the tumult of the Trump years.

Perhaps the biggest immediate challenge for Ms Yellen - and one for which she is uniquely suited - is patching up relations between the Treasury and the Fed. Tensions were heightened recently when Steven Mnuchin, the outgoing Treasury secretary, unexpectedly decreed that several emergency loan facilities put in place by the Fed would expire at the end of the year. Mr Powell had made clear that he thought it was too early to end these schemes. Fortunately, despite being passed over in favour of Mr Powell two years ago, Ms Yellen is said to have an excellent working relationship with the Fed chair.

That is just as well because, with US interest rates already effectively at zero and the US central bank spending $120bn (£90bn) each month as part of its asset purchase programme, monetary policy is approaching its limits.

Accordingly, the heavy lifting will now need to be done through fiscal policy, although there is also a need for the Treasury and the Fed to be working more closely together than they have been. Ms Yellen is likely to be instrumental in that and it will reassure Wall Street.

Whether she will be able stave off a so-called "double dip" recession, though, is open to question. With more US cities and states having imposed restrictions on movement and in business activity in recent weeks, the jobs market is once more starting to deteriorate, while US consumers are beginning to tighten the purse strings once again.

If there is a concern about this appointment it is that, while Ms Yellen has immense experience in monetary policy and begins in the job trusted and respected both by Wall Street and Main Street, she is less schooled in the rough and tumble of Congressional politics.

Her new boss, who has made that particular discipline his life's work, may be able to help out in that regard.