Janet Yellen is the best candidate for the job:
--She is a respected academic economist who has years of deep policy experience, including heading the Council of Economic Advisers, serving as president of the San Fransisco Fed, and her current job as vice-chair of the Fed itself.
--She called the housing bubble / credit crunch in late 2007: "The possibilities of a credit crunch developing and of the economy slipping into recession seem all too real".
--She correctly predicted the very slow pace of the recovery in 2009: "The pace of the recovery will be frustratingly slow."
No other candidate for the job possesses the combination of intellectual heft, public service, and record of forecasting the most important economic trends of our time.