US President Barack Obama plans to nominate San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Janet Yellen, a respected policy dove, to be vice chairman of the central bank, a source familiar with the process said on Thursday.
Yellen would replace Donald Kohn, a 40-year veteran of the Fed who announced earlier this month that he would retire on June 23. The nomination for the four-year term as the Fed’s No. 2 would be subject to Senate approval.
Yellen is considered one of the most “dovish” of the central bank’s policymakers, meaning she is seen to lean toward policies that will boost growth and promote employment rather than those aimed at keeping inflation at bay.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Reached by telephone she declined to comment, as did the US Treasury Department. The White House did not respond to requests for a comment.
Kohn’s impending departure means that Obama has three seats to fill on the seven-member board of the US central bank. The source said top candidates had been identified for each of the three spots, but all selections, including Yellen’s, are subject to completion of a vetting process.
The source said the administration was also vetting a number of other candidates in case any of its top picks fell through.
One of the people under consideration to fill a board seat is Sarah Bloom Raskin, the top bank regulator for the state of Maryland, a different source familiar with the process said.
The administration’s decision to narrow its search to include Yellen and Raskin was first reported by Bloomberg.
Yellen was chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton between 1997 and 1999 and a Fed governor between 1994 and 1997.
Currently Maryland’s commissioner of banking regulation, Raskin is a lawyer who previously worked at Promontory Financial Group, the Senate Banking Committee, and the New York Fed.
Among other names cited as possible candidates for the third vacancy are Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Peter Diamond, Harvard economists Jeremy Stein and David Scharfstein, and Johns Hopkins University economist Laurence Ball.
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