A Fed for the People

Peter Hapak for TIME

Time economics columnist Rana Foroohar had heard that Janet Yellen was the best-prepared participant at Federal Reserve Board meetings. But even Rana was surprised that Yellen's penchant for gathering intelligence somehow included knowing where Rana had spent her Christmas vacation. "Talk about soft power," Rana says. In her very first interview as Fed chair, Yellen spoke as convincingly about income inequality and unemployment as she did about the immense but more abstract challenge of managing the nation's $10.9 trillion money supply. Her job, Yellen told Rana in her office at the Fed in Washington, involves far more than merely managing inflation...

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