White House Considering San Francisco Fed President Williams for Fed's No. 2 Job -- Update
January 18 2018 - 7:32PM
Dow Jones News
By Nick Timiraos
The White House is considering John Williams, the president of
the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, as a candidate to serve
as the vice chairman of Federal Reserve Board in Washington,
according to people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Williams succeeded Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen as the San
Francisco Fed leader in 2011, after Ms. Yellen was tapped by
President Barack Obama to serve as the Fed's vice chairwoman in
2010. Mr. Williams previously served as the bank's research
director, reporting to Ms. Yellen, and would fit the Trump
administration's interest in filling the vice chairman post with
someone who is a widely respected expert in monetary economics.
Mr. Williams joined the San Francisco Fed in 2002 and previously
served as a senior economist for the Fed board in Washington,
joining the central bank in 1994.
A spokesman for the San Francisco Fed declined to comment.
The White House has interviewed several other economists for the
position, and it isn't clear whether there is a front-runner or
when a nominee will be named. Other candidates have included
Richard Clarida, a managing director at money manager Pimco;
Lawrence Lindsey, a former Fed official who later served as a top
economic adviser to President George W. Bush; and Mohamed El-Erian,
the former chief executive of Pimco.
The process of selecting the central bank's No. 2 official has
received more attention from investors than in the past because
President Donald Trump has nominated Fed governor Jerome Powell to
succeed Ms. Yellen when her term expires next month.
Mr. Powell, who has voted consistently to support Ms. Yellen's
interest-rate policy decisions, if confirmed by the Senate would be
the first Fed leader in three decades without a Ph.D. in economics.
That could give the vice chairman more influence on theoretical
economic debates than was the case under Ms. Yellen or her
predecessors Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan.
Mr. Trump will have an opportunity to select most of the Fed
board's seven members. The panel has three vacancies now. Ms.
Yellen has said she would resign her seat as a governor after her
successor has been sworn in; her term as chairwoman ends Feb.
3.
Fed governor Randal Quarles, Mr. Trump's first Fed nominee, took
office in October.
Besides Ms. Yellen, the Fed board only has one other Ph.D.
economist, Lael Brainard, who was nominated by President Barack
Obama.
Mr. Trump has nominated Marvin Goodfriend, an economist at
Carnegie Mellon University, to fill one of the vacant board seats,
and a Senate committee is set to consider his nomination
Tuesday.
Mr. Williams's candidacy is noteworthy because while he has been
viewed as a close ally of Ms. Yellen, he has sometimes taken
positions that are controversial among his colleagues or with the
public. He also has collaborated on research with his former
professor, Stanford economist John Taylor, whom Mr. Trump
considered as a candidate for Fed chairman and who remains popular
with conservatives on Capitol Hill.
In recent months, for example, Mr. Williams has revived calls
for the Fed to debate proposed changes to its current policy
framework of targeting 2% inflation.
Mr. Williams has advocated recently for a price-level target,
which would allow the Fed to make up for periods of below-target
inflation by allowing inflation to run higher later during an
expansion to make up for the earlier shortfall.
"I think we need to think seriously about how we would do one or
a combination of these to prepare ourselves better for that next
storm," Mr. Williams said in a call with reporters in November.
The Fed formally adopted its 2% inflation objective in 2012
after maintaining such a target informally for many years.
Officials have said they didn't move ahead with more radical
changes at that time in part because they were focused on healing
the damage from the 2007-09 recession.
Discussions around changing the inflation framework have taken
on new attention now because the economy is seen as largely
recovered from the crisis and officials are looking ahead to how
they might boost growth in a future downturn, when they are likely
to have less room to cut interest rates than in past
recessions.
If Mr. Williams were nominated, it could signal a greater
prospect of a shift in the Fed's inflation objectives, which would
have important ramifications for how the Fed sets short-term
interest rates. Still, any decisions are likely more than a year
away.
Write to Nick Timiraos at nick.timiraos@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 18, 2018 19:17 ET (00:17 GMT)
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