President Obama nominated Janet Yellen to be Federal Reserve chairwoman. When she is, she will take office at a critical time. For the past quarter-century the Fed has accumulated more and more power. It has lowered interest rates to rescue plunging stock markets, and is now engaged in a vast experiment that’s adding $1 trillion to its balance sheet every year — with little to show for it.
Meanwhile, stock indexes keep hitting new highs on traders’ expectations that the Fed will keep doling out $85 billion a month in “quantitative easing,” which the Federal Open Market Committee voted to continue Wednesday.
