Janet Yellen + Mr. Janet Yellen: Total Power Couple

Janet Yellen was finally confirmed as the Federal Reserve Chair, which means she and her flawless bob will be gracing the cover of this week’s TIME. Of course the main question on many peoples’ mind, right after, um, banking reform and the housing crisis and the whole “So how’s the economy?” thing, is CAN WOMEN HAVE IT ALL, vis-à-vis Janet Yellen and her husband George Akerlof:

Yellen is a brilliant mathematician and has been uncannily accurate in her economic forecasts, including predicting the sub-prime crisis well before 2008. But there are other smart economists and shrewd forecasters; it’s hard to find a comparable example of a power couple. Yellen is married to Nobel laureate George Akerlof, who teaches economics at U.C. Berkeley; their son Robert, 32, is an economics professor at the University of Warwick in the UK. In her interview with Rana, Yellen described her husband as “a completely full partner” over the course of their marriage, down to the diapers and dishes. “I think if you counted up how many hours each one of us logged in, he certainly gets more than 50 %,” she said.

Well, if we had to ask our Fed Chair how many diapers she did when her adult son was a baby THIRTY YEARS AGO, at least we got a good answer.

Photo: Global X


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