I am asking this sincerely: Why does it matter who the next Fed chairman will be? What difference does it make if Larry Summers or Janet Yellen or someone else heads the central bank?
More to the point: What does the Fed chairman do? What kind of power does he or she actually have?
To find out, I called Joe Gagnon, an economist who worked at the Fed for nearly 20 years and who now works at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Read a condensed transcript of our conversation at Planet Money.
Seth Maxon 