Washington — President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Federal Reserve has kept a close eye on the auto sector in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
Janet Yellen, vice chair of the Federal Reserve and former head of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said in a September 2009 speech that the Obama administration’s $3 billion “cash for clunkers” program that year helped boost auto sales.
“Recently, sales of light vehicles have begun to rise, in part due to the government’s ‘cash for clunkers’ program,” she said in the speech. “As a result, auto manufacturing has picked up and, with inventories lean, prospects are good for further production increases.”
The program in August 2009 helped Americans buy nearly 700,000 new vehicles with government subsidies of nearly $2.9 billion.
In another speech in 2009 she noted that a Federal Reserve program made it easier for people to get auto loans. The Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility program, Yellen said, helped “restore functioning in other impaired markets that provide credit to households and businesses. The TALF supports the issuance of securities collateralized by auto, student, credit card and Small Business Administration loans — sectors where the issuance of new securities has slowed to a trickle.”
In a 2011 speech, Yellen noted the auto sector was rebounding, saying, “Automotive supply chain disruptions have also diminished in recent months, resulting in a rebound of both the production and sales of new motor vehicles.”
Yellen also has talked in passionate terms about job losses during the recession.
“Some 6 million jobs vaporized during the recession. Each of these was once held by a real human being, who likely depended on that paycheck to pay the mortgage, buy the groceries, and put gas in the car,” she said in 2009. “The loss of these jobs is an immense tragedy. We should never forget that this awful recession is a flesh-and-blood thing that robs our families, neighbors, and friends of their livelihood.”
The current chair of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, has met with top auto executives over the years — partly to keep tabs on a key part of the U.S. economy. He met with Ford president and CEO Alan Mulally in June.
Sorce: The Detroit News
