Narayana Kocherlakota, Columnist

Trump’s Fed Nominees Will Mean Easier Money

If confirmed, count on Judy Shelton and Christopher Waller to push for lower interest rates.

January 23, 2020 at 1:30 PM UTC

Narayana Kocherlakota is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of economics at the University of Rochester and was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 2009 to 2015.

Why the long face?
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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There are two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. President Donald Trump has nominated monetary policy experts Judy Shelton and Christopher Waller to fill them, subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate. The president picked Shelton and Waller because they are seen as favoring easier monetary policy. As governors, how would the views of Shelton and Waller affect the Fed’s choices?

Here are some relevant facts: No governor has dissented from a Federal Open Market Committee decision since 2005. There has been no FOMC meeting in which more than one governor dissented since 1993. Three governors have dissented at the same meeting only twice since 1936.1