Staking out her support for policies crafted by current chairman Ben Bernanke, Yellen, the Fed vice chair, told senators reviewing her nomination that the Fed will do whatever is in its power to back a robust US economic recovery.
Growth is still too soft and unemployment at 7.3 percent too high to ease up on the stimulus throttle, she told the Senate Banking Committee.
"We have made good progress, but we have farther to go to regain the ground lost in the crisis and the recession.
"
"I consider it imperative to do what we can to promote a very strong recovery," she told the committee, which must approve her nomination before it goes to the full Senate.
She also denied that the easy-money policy, including near-zero interest rates and billion a month in bond-buying stimulus, had generated fresh bubbles in property or stock markets.
A respected academic economist and Fed veteran who has focused some of her research on the social and economic impacts of joblessness, Yellen