“Until [Friday] morning, Gary Cohn was the overall front-runner, in my determination,” to be the nominee for Fed chairman, said Alan Blinder, a former Fed vice chairman. “I don’t think so anymore.”
Blinder said the points Cohn and Yellen were making on Friday were very different. Cohn supports Trump’s plan to pare back banking regulations, but has drawn a line about the way Trump responded to the Charlottesville violence.
Yellen’s views were focused more squarely on the economy and bank oversight, and Blinder said she sent a signal that she won’t be pushed into backing away from bank regulation as long as she’s Fed chairwoman.
“Janet Yellen has too much backbone,” Blinder said. “She is not going to make a loyalty pledge to Donald Trump.”