Janet Yellen takes the reins at the US Federal Reserve

Janet Yellen has sought to sooth market worries in her new role at the head of the Federal Reserve.

Mark Carney's new American counterpart was also in action this week. Janet Yellen, the first woman to head the Federal Reserve, updated the markets on the central bank's assessment of the economy. She repeated her predecessor Ben Bernanke's assurance that interest rates will stay near zero until "well past the time" that the unemployment rate drops below 6.5%.

The Fed previously said it would consider raising interest rates once the rate falls below 6.5%; it is now 6.6%. She will also continue gradually reducing the monthly size of the Fed's money-printing programme.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.