Janet Yellen, set to be US Federal Reserve chief, is a driven woman
Passionate economist Janet Yellen is certain to revel in new role, despite being Obama's second choice for world's most important financial job
When the deadly Loma Prieta earthquake struck San Francisco in October 1989, then-professor Janet Yellen was working in her sixth-floor office at the University of California at Berkeley.
"I was sure the building was going to collapse and I was going to die," said Rose, the co-author of several research papers with Yellen, the current vice-chairman at the US Federal Reserve in Washington.
"But she was quite calm right through the earthquake. I don't think she said a thing."
That composure should serve Yellen well now she is set to take over as the next chairman of the US Federal Reserve and the first woman leader of the US central bank in its 100-year history.
Yellen's most crucial dilemma will be to decide when - or how - to turn off the flood of cheap money the Fed has been pouring into the US economy at a rate of US$85 billion a month to kick-start recovery.
When the current chairman, Ben Bernanke, suggested in May he might be ready to start winding down the programme, markets from South America to southern Asia reacted violently.