Janet Yellen is a "highly qualified" replacement for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, but will have her hands full calming "scared, nervous investors," says Bill Isaac, senior managing director of FTI Consulting and former chairman of the FDIC.
"[Yellen] is highly qualified for the position . . . My guess is she's going to take a greater personal interest in bank and bank holding company regulatory policies than Chairman Bernanke has," he told the "Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
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"She sort of signaled that . . . when she was president of the San Francisco Fed. So, she's going to take a stronger role in regulatory policy. I look forward to seeing how she handles it," he said Wednesday.
Isaac says nervous investors need to be reassured about the government and the future of the U.S. economy.
"People are scared, nervous, and they don't have a lot of confidence to make investment decisions, whether it's to go out and buy a new car, a new house, new appliances, or to start a new business, or to expand your factory," he said.
"People do not have the confidence in our government right now that they need. I don't believe that President [Barack] Obama's solely responsible for that by any means.
"But we've got fiscal policy wrong, we're frightened of the trillion-dollar deficits and growing, nobody seems to be able to get them under control, and we're scared about a monetary policy that says we're going to have zero percent interest rates because the economy's so horrible we can't raise the rates."
Nerves are also frayed over the nation's banking and financial system.
"So, we have failed fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policies, and we haven't corrected them and we've been spending all of our time arguing about things like healthcare instead of, let's get everybody back to work again."
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