The decision on who will lead the Federal Reserve for the next four years is reportedly imminent, and the implications will go beyond when interest rates will begin to be raised.
The horse race currently is between the current chair, Jerome Powell, and Lael Brainard, one of the Fed Board governors. On matters of monetary policy, the two have been on the same page throughout their tenures. But on regulatory and political matters, there are important differences. The decision by President Joe Biden will likely turn on those factors—plus the important question of who can garner 50 votes in the Senate to be confirmed.
Senate Banking Chairman Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) said he was told by White House officials a decision on the Fed chair is “imminent,” Bloomberg reported late Monday, while Biden said on Nov. 2 that the choice would be announced “fairly quickly.” The choice of who would lead the central bank when Powell’s term as chair expires next February typically would have been made weeks ago, but apparently the administration has had its hands full getting its key legislative initiatives through Congress.
As with the fight over Build Back Better, the social spending measure now mired in the Senate, the choice at the Fed comes down to the tug of war between moderates, who favor Powell, and progressives, who would prefer to replace him with Brainard.
Powell is a Republican who was nominated by former President Donald Trump as Fed chair after having been picked as a Fed governor by former President Barack Obama in 2011. Powell isn’t a trained economist. Instead, he has a law degree and worked in private equity.
Brainard is a Democrat and an economist who served in the Obama and Clinton administrations. She also contributed to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 unsuccessful presidential campaign.
On matters of monetary policy—which centers on the setting of interest rates and the purchase or sale of securities by the central bank to guide the overall economy—there is little difference between Powell and Brainard. He has overseen a significant change in the Fed’s approach, called Flexible Average Inflation Targeting, or FAIT to Fed watchers.
The new tack lets the Fed have inflation run above its 2% nominal target to make up for previous shortfalls. In practical terms, FAIT allows the economy to reach “maximum employment” before the federal-funds rate target, which remains at a rock-bottom 0%-0.25%, is raised.
The Fed is only beginning to reduce its massive securities purchases from the $120 billion monthly pace started during the crisis period of March 2020 triggered by the shutdowns to curb Covid-19. Along with massive fiscal injections, this ultra-easy monetary policy has lifted inflation to over 6% annually, according to the latest reading of the consumer price index.
Powell has admitted inflation has risen more than expected, but he continues to call it transitory and argue it will subside when supply-chain kinks are worked out. Brainard concurred with the decision to taper the Fed’s bond buying but may lean toward more patience on inflation before hiking rates. But until now, the differences on that score are minimal between the two.
Brainard, however, has been tougher on matters of financial regulation, dissenting regularly on decisions to ease restraints, including those imposed by the Dodd-Frank legislation enacted following the 2008-09 financial crisis. Powell has generally voted in favor of loosening some curbs, which spurred Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) to call him a “dangerous man” whose renomination she said she would would oppose.
Powell had been thought to be the favorite to be tapped for a second term. Yellen has publicly backed him to maintain continuity and to return to the tradition of a first-term president keeping the sitting Fed chair, even if that person was from the other party. She herself was denied a second term as Fed chair by Trump. Her predecessor, Ben Bernanke, a Republican, was given a second term by Obama. Similarly, Republican Alan Greenspan was renominated by Bill Clinton, and Democrat Paul Volcker was given a second term by Ronald Reagan.
But more recently, Yellen has hedged her endorsement. “I’ve said that I think chair Powell has done a very good job of running the Fed, of addressing the issues, particularly that arose when the pandemic struck,” she said Sunday on CBS ‘s Face the Nation. “But what’s important is that President Biden choose someone who’s experienced and credible and there are a range of candidates.”
Powell and Brainard were both reported to have been interviewed at the White House last week, with only Biden and National Economic Council head Brian Deese present. Yellen’s absence was notable given both her status as Treasury secretary and as the former Fed chair.
“Like the Senate Banking Chairman and many progressive Democrats, Mr. Deese firmly believes that monetary policy can be used to tackle and solve climate change, eliminate racism, and perhaps even get my 12-year-old son to consistently make his bed. There’s NOTHING that monetary policy—with the right leadership—cannot solve. It’s activist, very progressive…even experimental policy,” John Brady, managing director of institutional sales at Chicago-based institutional futures broker R.J. O’Brien, acidly writes in a client note.
Brainard is seen as more sympathetic to this broader view of the Fed’s remit than Powell. As such, Danielle DiMartino Booth, former adviser to Richard Fisher, the former Dallas Fed president, and publisher of the Quill Intelligence advisory service, thinks it would be a “massive gamble” for Biden to nominate Brainard now.
She sees the election results of two weeks ago, especially the Republican victory in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, as moving Democrats more toward the moderates. Moreover, a shift away from the continuity at the Fed that Powell represents would like roil the markets, which is the last thing Biden needs now, she adds in an interview.
One final curious development also noted by DiMartino Booth: Roger Ferguson late Monday said he wouldn’t join Apollo Group less than a month after the announcement he would come aboard the private-equity powerhouse, according to Bloomberg. The reason given was he still had obligations to TIAA-CREF, from which he resigned last March as chief executive.
Before that, Ferguson was Fed vice chair in 1999-2006 and won plaudits as the central bank’s crisis manager after 9/11, when Greenspan, then the Fed chief, was stuck out of the country following the terrorist attacks on the U.S. Ferguson also is Black, a consideration given the goal of diversity at the central bank.
On Predictit, Powell is still the heavy betting favorite, with a 73% probability of getting another term with Brainard at 23%. Of course, the bettors don’t set the outcome.