Jobs slump and Covid lead litany of post-Trump crises facing Janet Yellen

The first female US Treasury secretary must tackle the damage wreaked by the pandemic while keeping Wall Street happy

Of all the 78 US Treasury secretaries since Alexander Hamilton first took up the office in 1789, few have faced an in-tray piled quite so high as the one that will greet the first woman in the job: Janet Yellen.

The choice of the Brooklyn-born doctor's daughter to succeed Steve Mnuchin was a statement of intent by president-elect Joe Biden. Where many of her predecessors have been scions of Wall Street, Yellen's background is in economics and public policy, and she has made it clear that her priorities are with Americans struggling to get by rather than with investment bankers. There is a huge amount of suffering out there," she said in September as she urged Congress to agree a new stimulus package.

The appointment was probably one of the most well received in the history of the US Treasury