The attached audio is from SDPB's daily public-affairs show, In the Moment.
Monetary policy is expected to be consistent rather than politicized. Macroeconomist Joe Santos joins us to talk about the politics and economics of succession for the chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. We'll explore the potential impact of President Biden's choices for battling the current spike in inflation.
Joe Santos' blog
On Monday, November 22, 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden announced he would nominate Jerome (Jay) Powell to a second term as chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
Additionally, the president announced he would nominate Governor Lael Brainard to a term as vice chair of the board.
In the weeks leading up to these announcements, financial markets viewed Jay Powell, a Republican, and Lael Brainard, a Democrat, as leading contenders for the chair position. And, because most observers reason that Powell and Brainard hold very similar views on the appropriate stance of U.S. monetary policy, financial markets thought—and, likely, fretted—that if the president, a Democrat, had nominated Lael Brainard and, thus, unseated Jay Powell as chair, the nomination could politicize—further?—U.S. monetary policy. This is to say in a rather oversimplified way, the optics of a Democratic president replacing the Republican chair with his Democratic equivalent could seem politically motivated or, at the very least, highly irregular.