Janet Yellen’s greatest mistakes will haunt her toughest job yet

When Janet Yellen became chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in 1997, her husband, economic Nobel laureate George Akerlof, took full leave from his tenured post in Berkeley University’s economics department to support her career. Time to dust off those psychological support skills. Yellen, with her warm smile and demure stature, returns to the White House as Treasury Secretary amid a political and economic firestorm that is infinitely more complex than the one she took on nearly three decades ago.