Trump Picks New Federal Reserve Chair, Jettisons Janet Yellen
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Trump on Thursday tapped Jerome Powell to become head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, promoting a soft-spoken centrist to replace Janet Yellen when her term expires in February 2018.
Powell, appointed to the Fed board in 2012 by then-President Barack Obama, emerged as Trump’s choice from a five-person slate of possible nominees that included Yellen as well as others who would have represented a sharp change in monetary policy.
In an announcement at the White House, Trump called Powell a strong, committed and smart leader.
“He has proved to be a consensus builder for the sound monetary and financial policy that he believes in … based on his record I am confident that Jay has the wisdom and leadership to guide our economy,” Trump said as the Fed nominee looked on.
The decision, which ended an unusually public, months-long search, offers a bit of both worlds, allowing Trump to select a new Fed chief while getting continuity with a Yellen-run central bank that has kept the economy and markets on an even keel.
Powell, a 64-year-old lawyer and former investment banker, has backed Yellen’s general direction on monetary policy and, in recent years, shared her concerns that weak inflation justified a continued cautious approach to raising interest rates.
Top White House economic adviser Gary Cohn also was a contender for the position.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
