Since the elevation of Donald Trump as President of the United States, people have started to talk about the likely end of Janet Yellen as Chair of the US Federal Reserve. Her four-year term will be up by February 2018. This will be followed later by that of Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer. Her contemporaries like Mario Draghi of the European Central Bank (ECB) and Jaime Caruana of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) will also be stepping down.

The monetary authorities of advanced economies had commendably steered away from depression after the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007/08. However, they also faced much criticism for not being as successful in dealing with issues of deflation, prolonged recession and slow and sluggish recovery to the point of endangering their credibility. This has also been experienced by the Fed under Yellen.

… J. Soedradjad Djiwandono is Professor of International Economics at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Indonesia.