Brookings Snags Yellen, Becomes Mini-Federal Reserve

Brookings can now be called the Federal Reserve Bank of Think Tank Row.

The think tank has announced that Janet Yellen, who just stepped down as Chair of the Federal Reserve, has become a Distinguished Fellow in Residence with the Economic Studies program.

Here is what David Wessel, Director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings, had to say:

Although many hoped that she’d get a second term as Fed chair, we at Brookings are very pleased to have her join our team. She will be sitting down the hall from other scholars in Brookings’s Economic Studies program, including her predecessor at the Fed, Ben Bernanke; former Fed vice-chair Don Kohn, and Nellie Liang, former director of the Fed’s division of financial stability.

Here is more about Brookings's deep connections to the Federal Reserve:

Yellen’s appointment continues Brookings’s long history of collaboration with economists and policymakers who served in the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Most recently, Nellie Liang, former director of the Office of Financial Stability Policy and Research at the Federal Reserve, joined Economic Studies as the Miriam K. Carliner Senior Fellow in Economic Studies in February 2017. Alice Rivlin and Donald Kohn, both of whom served as Vice Chairs of the Federal Reserve, are Senior Fellows in the Economic Studies Program. Kohn is also the Robert V. Roosa Chair in International Economics. Alan Blinder, former Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve, is a Nonresident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies.

Past Brookings Board of Trustee members Frederic Delano and Paul Warburg were original members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 1914. Longtime Fed Chair William McChesney Martin, Jr. was a member of the Brookings Board of Trustees from 1970-1997. Edward Gramlich and Nancy Teeters, both Federal Reserve Governors, were Senior Fellows in the Economic Studies. Lael Brainard, also a Federal Reserve Governor, was a Brookings Vice President.

In 2014, after Brookings snagged Ben Bernanke, Think Tank Watch noted how Brookings had become the new "Shadow Fed."  Brookings is now both the mini-CIA and mini-Fed.