Janet Yellen Defends Her Record – and Delivers a Warning

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spends a lot of her energy thinking about what might threaten the U.S. financial system.

She wants to ensure that the market where the U.S. government borrows money is running smoothly. She’s worried about hedge funds that load up on debt. She’d like banks to be better prepared for a crisis.

These days, there’s also another, more foundational item on her list: whether we’ll have a peaceful transition of power after the 2024 election.

In a phone interview Wednesday afternoon, Yellen laid out the stakes to me.

The smooth transfer of power after elections, she said, is “really essential to our having a democratic system and a democratic government, and one of the tremendous strengths of our financial system is that it is based on strong institutions and rule of law.”