Friday, August 02, 2013

Krugman - Sexism and the Federal Reserve

Misogyny in the U.S. goes straight to the top, even right into the Federal Reserve.

Paul Krugman shines a light on the sexist campaign going on to undermine the eminently qualified Janet Yellen's shot at taking over the Federal Reserve when Ben Bernanke steps down as chairman.

Last week, The New York Sun published an editorial attacking Ms. Yellen titled “The Female Dollar.” The editorial took it for granted that the Fed has been following disastrously inflationary monetary policies for years, even though actual inflation is at a 50-year low. And it warned that things would get even worse if the dollar were to become merely “gender-backed.” I am not making this up.

True, The Sun is a marginal publication, with strong gold-bug tendencies, and nobody would pay much attention if the rest of the right had ignored or distanced itself from that editorial. In fact, however, The Wall Street Journal immediately followed up with its own editorial along the same lines, in the course of which it approvingly quoted The Sun piece, female dollar and all. 

The other campaign against Ms. Yellen has been subtler, involving repeated suggestions — almost always off the record — that she lacks the “gravitas” to lead the Fed. What does that mean? Well, suppose we were talking about a man with Ms. Yellen’s credentials: distinguished academic work, leader of the Council of Economic Advisers, six years as president of the San Francisco Fed, a record of working effectively with colleagues at the Board of Governors. Would anyone suggest that a man with those credentials was somehow unqualified for office?

Sorry, but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that gravitas, in this context, mainly means possessing a Y chromosome.

2 comments:

Lorne said...

Clearly, Mound, the boys do not want the girls playing on their side of the schoolyard.

Purple library guy said...

I guess she's not one of the "big swinging dicks" of Wall Street.

Kind of pathetic that a bunch of stockbrokers can even consider themselves "big swinging dicks". I would have expected excessively wealthy people whose jobs involve finance and, basically, sitting on their butts in offices dealing with abstractions, might aspire to being civilized. But by all accounts they don't, they wanna imagine they're macho warriors.