Columnist Michael Wolff: Gender Could Determine Winner in Fed Chairman Battle

USA Today columnist Michael Wolff posited on Tuesday that Lawrence Summers and Janet Yellen’s contest to replace Ben Bernanke as the next Federal Reserve Chairman boils down to a battle over gender.

“Of the many things that distinguish Summers, one, not unironically, is that he got thrown out of the presidency of Harvard for seeming to suggest a woman’s professional goals or orientation might be different from a man’s,” wrote Wolff.

Summers and Yellen are both Democrats “whose relative points of view really do not seem to differ all that much,” he asserted. 

It remains unclear whether the Obama White House will tap Yellen, the Federal Reserve’s vice chair and former president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, to become the first woman to chair the Federal Reserve. However, a source close to the Administration tipped CNBC that Summers will likely be named chairman in a few weeks. 

Yet many others say Summers’s Harvard controversy will likely leave Obama leaning toward Yellen to please his feminist base.

A Reuters poll of economists found that 40 of 44 believed Yellen will receive become the next Federal Reserve chairman.