Tim Duy, Columnist

Beware of Hard-Money Advocates Filling Fed Positions

Open slots on Fed's board may bring new thinking, along with greater market volatility.

January 24, 2017 at 5:58 PM UTC

Tim Duy is a professor of practice and senior director of the Oregon Economic Forum at the University of Oregon and the author of Tim Duy's Fed Watch.

Revving up.
Photographer: Chris Kleponis/AFP/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen made it clear in a recent speech that monetary policy wouldn't immediately be affected by the changing of the guard in Washington. It isn't the short-term that’s worth worrying about, but the long-term and the potential for new Fed governors to be neither objective nor divorced from political pressures.

With two vacancies on the Fed’s seven-seat board, the Donald Trump administration will have an opportunity to nominate policy makers more to the president's liking. He’ll also have a chance to pick a new chairman and vice chairman in 2018, when the terms of Yellen and her deputy, Stanley Fischer, expire.