Obama To Pick San Francisco Economist for No. 2 Spot at Fed, Report Says

President Barack Obama has decided on Janet L. Yellen, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, as his choice for the No. 2 position at the Federal Reserve, the New York Times reports.

Yellen, 63, would succeed Vice Chairman Donald L. Krohn, who will retire when his four-year term at the central bank expires in June.

But the selection process for the new Fed job apparently is not complete. The Times said administration officials were still talking with Yellen, who declined to comment when reached at her home.

Yellen, who earned a Ph.D in economics at Yale University, was chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors under President Clinton and also a member of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors.

If Yellen winds up in Washington, she is seen as likely to side with those who want to keep interest rates low as a way of spurring economic growth and reducing joblessness, the newspaper said. The Federal Reserve oversee the nation's monetary policy.

Yellen is married to George A. Akerlof, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of California-Berkeley.