By Nikhila Natarajan

New York, Nov 24 (IANS): US President-elect Joe Biden plans to nominate former chief of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen as Americas next Treasury secretary, according to a news break by The Wall Street Journal.

If confirmed, Yellen, 74, would become the first woman to lead the Treasury. She was also the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve, from 2014 to 2018. This year, she took on an unusual political role for a former Fed chair, becoming an adviser to the Biden presidential campaign.

Yellen, an expert on unemployment will wade straight into her area of expertise in 2021. The American economy has been hammered by a pandemic-triggered recession and anxiety is spiralling in the absence of social safety nets.

Biden said last week that his choice for treasury secretary would be "someone who I think will be accepted by all elements of the Democratic Party, progressives through the moderate coalition."

Yellen is married to George Akerlof, a Nobel Prize-winning economist.

News of Yellen's imminent ascension to Treasury is in line with chatter in Washington all week about more glass ceilings that will be shattered by the Biden team.

Post-election, Biden has promised that his Cabinet will look like America and will be the most diverse in the country's modern political history.

Biden's running mate and now Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is the first woman and the first Indian and Black American to ever rise to the highest political office in the United States.