dr. yellen is serving her first term as chair of the board of governors of the fastball system. she was sworn into office earlier this month. before that dr. yellen served as vice chair and member of the board of governors of the federal reserve system. she was also previously chair of the council of economic advisors. chair yellen, please begin your testimony. >> chairman johnson, senator crapo and other members of the committee, i'm pleased to present the federal reserve semi annual monetary policy report to the congress. in my remarks today, i will discuss the current economic situation and outlook before turning to monetary policy. i will conclude with an update on our continuing work on regulatory reform. first, let me acknowledge the important contributions of chairman bernanke. his leadership helped make our economy and financial system stronger and ensured that the federal reserve is transparent and accountable. i pledge to continue that work. the economic recovery gained greater traction in the second half of last year. real gross domestic product is currently estimated

dr. janet yellen as chair to deliver the federal reserve semi annual monetary policy report. chair yellen, i would like to congratulate you on your nomination and confirmation. in fact, the first time the woman has submitted the report to congress. chairman yellen, you a lot of important issues to focus on as chair including continued implementation of wall street reform, establishing policies to improve financial stability and reduce systemic risk and providing appropriate monetary policy to support our economy. overall, i'm encouraged by the recent improvements in the economy. it appears that economic growth is picking up and mainstream economists expect stronger growth this year. this is good news. however, i'm concerned that the economic recovery is not being felt by every american. too many cities and towns across america have not fully recovered from the great recession and continues to struggle. long-term unemployment remains historically high. we see recent college graduates, many of whom are burdened by high student loan debt, have a tough time finding work. income i

dr. yellen speaks, a group of fed critics is going to testify. one of them is john taylor, a stanford economics professor and former treasury official. he has been critical of the intervention. he is known for the taylor rule which states for each one percent increase in inflation, central banks should raise the nominal interest rate i more than one percentage point. this came up during questioning. >> and reference to the taylor rule, you said it is what sensible central banks do. ,hat begs the question today using your words, are you a sensible central banker? if not, when will you become one? >> i believe i am a sensible central banker. these are very unusual times in which monetary policy, for quite a long time, has not even been able to do what a rule like the taylor rule would have prescribed. for several years, that rule would have prescribed that the federal funds rate should be in negative territory, which is impossible. >> unusual times indeed. john taylor's written testimony says discretionary economic and spending policies are to blam

dr. yellen, in your confirmation hearing you commented on the need to monitor the cost and risk to financialstability the current monetary policy creates. you also stated the you believe monetary policy is most effective when the public understands what the fed is trying to do and how it plans to do it. i appreciate your commitment to openness and transparency. i look forward to your thoughts as to how the fed will manage a return to normalized monetary policy and how you will communicate that transition to the public. i also look forward to learning more about your perspective on the implementation of the dodd-frank act and have different rules interact with each other and their impact on the economy at large. because of the size and complexity of these rules it is paramount that the regulators struck the right balance without unduly harming the economy. this was evident most recently in december with the final volker rule and its unintended and disproportionate effect on community banks with respect to their holdings of trust preferred collateral debt obligations. the economic impact of th

dr. kohn, if that is economic orthodoxy right now, why are you in ms. yellen saying such, putting such a dramatic faith in the dual mandate? if it is orthodoxy that we cannot influence the labor market in the long run with monetary policy. >> so i agree about the long run. that is influenced by the structure labor market competitive conditions and labor market, matching skills to jobs, et cetera. in the short to intermediate run, monetary policy can influence the labor market. >> has its? >> and the federal reserve recognizes this and the policy statement they put out in january of every year recognizes that they don't have control over the longer run but they do have influence over the short run. >> you talk about counterfactual. we have been doing this now for five years. has the zero interest rate policy of quantitative easing added jobs in the short-term? >> yes. >> you wouldn't agree with me that most if not all of the decline in the unemployment rate we see is people losing -- leaving the job market? >> i think we've had some of both. depends on which su

dr wolfe welcome back. thank you professor for average and you actually went to grad school grad school yale at the same time as janet yellen i don't i don't know if you do you are but what do you what do you think of her is she the right person for the job well she's the kind of person that has been groomed most of her adult life for this kind of work literally up through the ranks of the academic world the policy world vice chair under ben bernanke he so she is in every way the appropriate person to continue if we think that the crisis of the last few years the worst and deepest since the great depression is a time to rethink policy to face the failures of policy in the past then she is not the right person because nothing in her background or in your writing would predispose anyone to expect anything much different from her compared to what her predecessors did. from the from the time of the great depression until the reagan era we didn't really see any banking crises and then the reagan era banking crisis of course was after eighty three when reagan deregulated the s n l's in eighty six they fell apart if i'm rememberin

dr. carson is next. stuart: we are up 44 points. maybe janet yellenas something to do with this, mainline traders are concerned, but weaker because of the weather. where is the price of gold, 3033 is your answer up $5. the retirement scheme on the show, we asked charles to ddaw up stock strategies, if you are 65 or 30 and under, let's start with the first scenario, somebody comes to you and says i am 65 years old and have gone almost all the money i need for the next 20 years, what is the strategy? charles: to own stocks and big giant businessee where there's a huge barrier to entry and big winners lose something not put up, boeing will be one, aerospace, power utility, a big investment group, a big pipelinemaker is big, what do they have in common? big yields and it is hard for a new competitor to come on the rise in and i put one wild card in, the candy. you almost have all you want and need something with a little sizzle to the portfolio. stuart: 45 years old and behind on some money i need for the next 40 years. strategy? charles: 1 companies grow

dr. j, can we call it a bravado performance for the markets or janet yellen today i guess?performance by the market and by janet yellen today. as you said at the top, kelly, that's what people are worried about, was it going to be real or was it going to be exactly like bernanke? now it is, that she really nailed it. she stuck the landing. that's why we're up so strong today, kelly. >> all right. >> the markets wanted a female version of ben bernanke and they got it today with janet yellen. she said exactly what everyone wanted to hear and the market rallied. >> kate? >> i have to agree. i mean, obviously the market hates a negative surprise but they love a positive one, right? so there was some uncertainty about what yellen would say, what tone she would strike. we talked about this last week, would she make a break from bernanke? the data seems a little murky. i was in a meeting earlier with a cfo who said we learned to not read too much into any given month of economic data, and i think she's taking that kind of thinking into account. >> carol, sorry, what were you going

discord between republicans and democrats and yellen saying a lot of things that make people feel good and suddenly you get interpretations of quarters like dr and people say yellen's good and we're not going to have a government shutdown, 24 hours an amalez izele numbe l amazeing things happen. >> is it a year where we get up here and we go or is it going to be we get through the close from last year and then we actually start making, you know, even if it's choppy, if it's above 1850, i wonder if that's where we spend the year or whether we spend it just trying to consolidate last year? >> you had david darst on yesterday and he was amazing, he basically said the next level will be dependent on china. if china comes back strong, if the baltic freight goes up from 1,000 to 1,200 and we get it to 1,500, if we start seeing the chinese market the last three days, we'll blow through because china is the key market. not talking about turkey or argentina, we are talking about turkey from the point of view well, do you know what, maybe that wasn't so bad. italian bond rates ten year, 3.66. you think our rates are going to go through china. italian