Trump nominates Fed's Powell to lead U.S. central bank

WASHINGTON - 2 November 2017: President Donald Trump on Thursday tapped Fed Governor Jerome Powell to become head of the U.S. central bank, 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.

In June, he laid out both a defense of the Fed’s gradualist path and a critique of those, including some of his competitors for the Fed’s top job, who argued that the central bank had increased the risk of high inflation and other problems.

Trump on several occasions has said he would prefer rates to stay low, a position at odds with some of those who were on his short list for the Fed job, particularly Stanford University economist John Taylor and former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh. Top White House economic adviser Gary Cohn also was a contender.

Powell has been a reliable supporter of the consensus forged by Yellen on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, and likely will be seen as a less risky choice with the economy growing solidly and U.S. stock markets near record highs.

The Fed has raised rates twice this year and is widely expected to do so again next month.

”The (FOMC) has been patient in raising rates, and that patience has paid dividends,“ Powell said in his remarks to the Economic Club of New York in June.”