Fischer Is Confirmed To Fed Board

Fischer Is Confirmed To Fed Board

By Don Lee, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Stanley Fischer, the former Bank of Israel head picked by President Barack Obama for the No. 2 job at the Federal Reserve, won Senate confirmation Wednesday to become a member of the Fed’s board of governors.

The 68-27 vote in favor of Fischer means he will have little trouble being installed as the central bank’s vice chair when a separate Senate vote on that appointment is taken later.

Fischer, 70, would succeed Janet L. Yellen, who moved up to become the Fed chairwoman earlier this year. An internationally respected economist with a dual U.S. and Israeli citizenship, Fischer joins the Fed at a challenging time.

Yellen and her colleagues have been gradually reducing their bond-buying stimulus program aimed at lowering long-term interest rates, and the Fed is looking ahead to the day when it will need to raise its key short-term interest rate, which has been pinned near zero since late 2008.

In fact, in their policy meeting last month, Fed officials had a broad discussion about how they might hike rates and manage an “eventual normalization” of monetary policy, according to an account of the meeting, released Wednesday with the usual three-week lag.

Many analysts don’t expect the Fed’s so-called federal funds rate to rise until about the middle of next year, but that will depend on the economic conditions, in particular employment and inflation trends. After a winter stall, the American economy and job growth are showing signs of gaining momentum again, but the housing market has slowed and the global outlook remains hazy.

In its last meeting three weeks ago, the Fed generally viewed the economy as having “returned to a trajectory of moderate growth,” the minutes indicated. But some officials thought it was too early to say the pickup would be sustained, expressing concerns about a “persistent slowdown in the housing sector” or a “further slowing of growth in China or an increase in geopolitical tensions regarding Russia and Ukraine.”

The Fed’s next monetary policy meeting is set for June 17-18, likely to be Fischer’s first as vice chair of the board.

In recent weeks the Fed has been operating short-handed as a series of departures and the slow confirmation process had left three vacancies in the seven-member board, with another governor, Jeremy C. Stein, set to step down May 28.

A second Obama nomination to the board, Lael Brainard, a former Treasury official, is also expected to win confirmation, but it isn’t clear when that vote will be taken.

As second-in-command to Yellen, Fischer is expected to be a loyal supporter of the chairwoman and will bring many years of experience in finance and economics. He was the top deputy at the International Monetary Fund in the 1990s and a vice chair at Citigroup from 2002 to 2005. Previously Fischer taught at the University of Chicago and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his students included former Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.

AFP Photo/Timothy A. Clary

Want more economics news? Sign up for our free daily newsletter. 

Advertising

Start your day with National Memo Newsletter

Know first.

The opinions that matter. Delivered to your inbox every morning

Judge In Trump Georgia Case Says Willis Can Continue Prosecution
Fani Willis , right, in Fulton County courtroom

March 15 (Reuters) - The Georgia judge overseeing Donald Trump's trial on charges of trying to overturn his election defeat in the U.S. state said that lead prosecutor Fani Willis can remain on the case, so long as she removes a deputy she had a personal relationship with.

Keep reading...Show less
Russian Witness Against Biden Received $600K From 'Trump Associates'

Alexander Smirnov, center, leaving courthouse in Las Vegas on February 20, 2024

Photo by Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal

I’ll bet you didn’t know that it is possible in this great big world of ours to live a comfortable life being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing basically nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly, but the money you get is unattached to normal stuff we are all familiar with like a job, complete with job-related duties and office hours and a W-2 and maybe even a job title. The money can thus be described by what it is not, which is aboveboard and visible. Instead, this kind of money often ends up in the kinds of accounts said to be “controlled” by you or others, which is to say, accounts which may not, and often do not, have your name on them.

Keep reading...Show less
{{ post.roar_specific_data.api_data.analytics }}