Yellen to provide clues?
WASHINGTON — When Janet Yellen delivers her testimony on the Federal Reserve’s semiannual report to Congress on Wednesday, investors may listen as much for clues to her own future — and the Fed’s — as they will to what she says about interest rate policy.
The Fed chair is likely to repeat a message she has been sending about rates: That further gradual increases will follow the three rate hikes the Fed has made since December. She is expected to say that even though inflation has slowed further below the Fed’s target level, the job market appears healthy enough to justify slightly higher borrowing costs.
But lawmakers may prod Yellen about her own plans and about the potential reshaping of the Fed itself resulting from a forthcoming influx of new board members selected by President Donald Trump. During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump was critical of the central bank for its low-rate policies, which he said were helping Democrats, and for its efforts to enact tougher regulations on banks in response to the 2008 financial crisis.
On Monday, the administration announced that it had chosen Randal Quarles, a Treasury Department official under two Republican presidents, to serve as vice chairman for supervision, the Fed’s top bank regulatory post.
