Weekend Economists Ring in the Old, Wring Out the New: Dec. 30, 2011 to Jan. 2, 2012

[Demeter]

144. Jerome Powell, Jeremy Stein Chosen by Obama to Fill Fed’s Board Vacancies

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-27/obama-to-nominate-jerome-powell-jeremy-stein-to-fed-s-board-of-governors.html

President Barack Obama said he will nominate two former U.S. Treasury Department officials for the Federal Reserve Board, including one who served in a Republican administration. Jerome Powell, an attorney who was a Treasury undersecretary for former President George H.W. Bush, and Jeremy Stein, a Harvard University economist who has advised the current administration, are Obama’s picks. Pairing candidates who served under both parties may help ease approval by a Senate where the Democrats’ majority narrowed last year, letting Republicans block administration nominees. The Fed’s seven-member Board of Governors has two vacancies. While the term of Elizabeth Duke, an appointee of President George W. Bush, expires Jan. 31, she can continue to serve until a successor is appointed.

The number of voting policy makers who could oppose Bernanke will fall to one in 2012 from three in 2011, Perli said. The Fed chairman gained majorities for his decisions this year...


Powell, whose term would run through Jan. 31, 2014, has spent most of his career outside government, spanning the worlds of private equity, investment banking and law. He would add financial-markets experience missing since Kevin Warsh, 41, left the Fed board in April. Powell was a partner at the Carlyle Group, the Washington- based manager of private-equity funds, from 1997 to 2005 and was an investment banker in the 1980s with Dillon Read and Co. after working as an attorney following his 1979 graduation from Georgetown University’s law school. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University. Powell joined the Treasury as an assistant secretary in 1990 and was appointed an undersecretary in 1992. While at the department, he helped revamp government-bond auction procedures after Salomon Brothers admitted to bid-rigging.
Stein’s term would end Jan. 31, 2018. He served in the Obama administration from February to July 2009 as a senior adviser to the Treasury secretary and on the staff of the National Economic Council, according to Harvard’s website. He was also a senior staff economist on President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from September 1989 to June 1990, leaving just before Powell was nominated to a Treasury post...


Like Bernanke and several other senior Fed officials, Stein holds a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Stein’s research topics include corporate investment and financing decisions, risk management, stock- market efficiency and capital allocation inside companies. Stein, who has served on the New York Fed’s Financial Advisory Roundtable since 2006, rejoined Harvard as an economics professor in 2000. He worked as an assistant professor of finance at the business school from 1987 to 1990. Stein taught at MIT from 1990 to 2000. Stein also worked as an intern at Goldman Sachs (GS) and Co. from July 1986 to June 1987, according to his curriculum vitae posted on Harvard’s website.