Our hifalutin’ leaders don’t (ever, ever) come down to earth

PEOPLE across a broad swath of Philippine society  became fans of Janet Yellen, the Fed Chair and said to be the most powerful  public official  in the world, when she used her first House appearance to talk about the plight of the unfortunate in the US.  Used to our hectoring, pompous  technocrats who wish that the  poor  were better dead than alive, Yellen was seen as a person of  both gravitas and humanity.

Since then, many have been reading her public statements to see whether  that  initial commiseration with America’s underclass was a deep  personal and professional conviction – and not just an outlier of a statement.