Biden Will Nominate Three New Fed Officials - The New York Times

The White House plans to nominate Lisa Cook, an economist at Michigan State University who has researched racial disparities and labor markets, and Philip Jefferson, an economist and administrator at Davidson College, to open seats on the Fed’s Board of Governors.

Biden will also nominate Sarah Bloom Raskin to serve as the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, a job created to help police the nation’s largest banks after the 2008 financial crisis.

Powell for a second stint as Fed chair and Lael Brainard, now a governor, as vice chair of the central bank.

If they are confirmed to their posts, the seven-person Fed board would have four women, one Black man and two white men — the most diverse team in the Fed’s roughly 108 years of existence.

“The headline is, and should be, about diversity,” said Kaleb Nygaard, a senior research associate at the Yale Program on Financial Stability who studies the Fed, explaining that personnel choices are a big moment for Mr.

Quarles instituted a number of adjustments to regulation and supervision that made oversight less onerous for banks, and that critics argued weakened financial rules.

The vice chair for supervision serves as the Fed’s chief connection with banks and markets, a role that will take on more prominence as the central bank considers whether to issue a digital currency.

The Fed is developing climate-risk scenarios to judge banks’ exposure, something the vice chair for supervision will be highly involved in.

And the person will need to work with other regulators at the Financial Stability Oversight Council — an interagency group focused on guarding against systemic financial risks — to deal with weaknesses in money market funds and other financial instruments that the pandemic laid bare.

The Fed is contemplating how quickly to react by removing support from the economy, and all governors hold a constant vote on monetary policy, giving the new picks a potential say in the matter.

Cook — who would be the first Black woman ever to sit on the Fed’s board — is well known for her work in trying to improve diversity in economics, including through the American Economic Association Summer Program, which helps to prepare undergraduates for potential careers in the field.

She has not said much publicly about her monetary policy philosophy, though she has spoken favorably about keeping the Fed independent from politics.

He has written about the economics of poverty, and his research has delved into whether monetary policy that stokes investment with low interest rates helps or hurts less-educated workers.

It is unclear how the reworked board might alter debate over current monetary policy, which could involve sticky choices about how quickly to slow an economy struggling with rapid price increases

“If inflation does become too persistent, if these high levels of inflation get entrenched in our economy, and in people’s thinking, then inevitably that will lead to much tighter monetary policy from us, and it could lead to a recession, and that would be bad for workers,” Mr