Obama nominates 'jobs champion' Janet Yellen as Fed chair US Congress and Senate must approve the appointment before it is set in stone, but commentators expect limited opposition to Ms Yellen, who has been deputy chairman of the Fed since 2010, and one of the key architects of its current policy. The liberal economist is one of the Fed "doves," who believe the government should use artificial measures such as quantitative easing to boost the economy, and are not yet too concerned about the effects on inflation. The New Yorker, who is married to George Ackerlof, the Nobel Prize winning economist, has been a strong advocate of the Fed's $85bn-a-month bond buying scheme, and is expected to keep the taps on for a number of months longer than might have been the case under her predecessor. "A Yellen Fed would likely taper slowly and cautiously," said Paul Edelstein, an economist at HIS Global Insight. Mr Bernanke's Fed was expected to start tapering the so-called quantitative easing programme last month. Minutes of the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee's September meeting, published on Wednesday, show that just one of its members wanted to start tapering then, but that most members believed it would begin before the end of the year. However, some analysts believe that it will now keep running at full tilt until as late as March, given Ms Yellen's appointment and unrest caused by the continuing political stand-off in Washington. The White House is locked in a game of brinkmanship with the Republicans, which has already prompted the US government to shut down and now puts America in danger of breaching its debt ceiling. Unless they reach a deal by October 17, the country is likely to default on its debt repayments, plunging the global financial system into turmoil and potentially sparking a new recession. Ms Yellen's appointment offered investors some much-needed certainty against this backdrop. She is expected to be more forthright about her own opinion than her predecessor ever was, concentrating power at the Federal Reserve, but also helping the central bank to communicate more clearly. This will be welcomed by investors, who spent the summer struggling to decipher the Fed's next move, as Mr Bernanke offered a series of mixed messages. Ms Yellen is expected to keep a sharp focused on improving America's labour market, already a key feature of Fed policy. "Some indicators of labor market conditions showed further improvement in recent months, but the unemployment rate remained elevated," said the minutes of September's FOMC meeting, published on Wednesday afternoon. The former London School of Economics lecturer has a strong track record of accurate forecasting. At one point in the race for Fed leadership, Mr Obama signalled his strong support for Larry Summers, who served as US Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton. However, Mr Summers withdrew from the race last month after widespread criticism and signs of tough resistance to the former White House economic advisor in Congress. Although he is highly regarded as an intellectual, he is also seen as arrogant and often blamed for sowing the seeds of the financial crisis by loosening restrictions on banks. By contrast, Ms Yellen is a strong advocate of banking regulation, and has won public support from hundreds of other economists.