Obama fills vacant Fed seats after three-year delay

[Integral]

Obama To Nominate Powell, Stein For Board Seats At Bernanke Fed

President Obama announced his intent to nominate replacements for a pair of vacant seats on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors Tuesday, Jerome Powell and Jeremy Stein.

“I am grateful that these individuals have agreed to serve their nation at this important time for our economy,” the president said. “Their distinguished backgrounds and experience coupled with their impressive knowledge of economic and monetary policy make them tremendously qualified to serve in these important roles.”

Both candidates will need to be confirmed by the Senate for the 14-year terms on the seven-member board. The current Board of Governors is composed of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Vice Chair Janet Yellen, Elizabeth Duke, Daniel Tarullo and Sarah Bloom Raskin.

Powell, a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, served in the Treasury Department under President George H.W. Bush and is a former partner at private equity firm The Carlyle Group.

Stein, the Moise Y. Safra Professor of Economics at Harvard University, has also taught at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Harbard Business School. He served as a senior advisor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and on the staff of the Obama Administration’s National Economic Council.

Tuesday’s nominations come as the Fed prepares to review the latest version of stress tests from the U.S. banking sector, due in early January, which require a harsh look at firms’ capital levels and ability to withstand further deterioration in markets and the economy.

The Fed is keeping a sharper eye on the industry’s ability to weather storms like the European debt crisis. Earlier this year it rejected a proposed dividend hike from Bank of America. More recently, the Fed blocked a proposed payout increase from MetLife, a decision that prompted the insurer to move to rid itself of bank holding company status. That process took another step forward Tuesday, when MetLife said it had sold $7.5 billion in deposits to General Electric’s finance arm, GE Capital.

source

This is good news, though it comes too late to be of much use.

Stein is a professor of financial economics and works at the intersection of monetary policy, stock prices, and banking. He's an extremely good choice for the Fed at this juncture and would have been sorely appreciated when the Fed was doing all of its unconventional policy back in 2008-09.

I know nothing about Powell. He's not an academic, which might be a net positive given that almost everyone else on the Board is.

 

[Oerdin]

They've basically been spending all of their time trying to get the nominees Obama has already made through the senate but the Republicans have blocked/filibustered an astounding 99% of all of his nominees which slows down the process so much there really isn't a process. It's just pure obstructionism.

The weird thing is in the odd time where he's able to strong arm the Senate into actually allowing a vote on his nominees they pass with like 95-1 (four not present) votes so it is perfectly obvious the Republicans really don't object to the nominees and simply are trying to muck up the system. The hyper partisan bastards need to be flayed alive for their bullsh!t.

 

[Cutlass]

Any word on why the nominations were late in coming? I seem to recall it's been mostly obstruction, not nominations, that have been holding up appointments, as Oerdin was saying.