Newly minted President-elect Donald Trump can already put changing up the structure of the Federal Reserve at the top of his list.
Right now, there are two seats up for grabs. According to an article in MarketWatch by Greg Robb, there are two existing vacancies on the seven-member board of governors.
From the piece:
There are two vacancies on the Fed because Senate Republicans this year blocked a vote on President Barack Obama’s two nominees to the central bank: Allan Landon, a former Bank of Hawaii executive, and Kathryn Dominguez, a professor at the University of Michigan, over a dispute over who at the Fed would oversee the central bank’s new powers to oversee Wall Street.
Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said Trump was likely to nominate two “hard money” candidates.
Trump’s real issues are with Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, but it’s likely he will have to wait until 2018 to change the leadership of the central bank, the article noted.
Back in April, HousingWire ran the headline, “Trump: If I win, Yellen's days at the Fed will be numbered.”
At the time, Trump told Fortune that he believes Yellen has done a “serviceable” job as the Fed Chair, but said that he would be “more inclined to put other people in” as Fed Chair, as opposed to reappointing Yellen.
The MarketWatch article added, “Fed insiders say they don’t think she will leave early even though Trump has criticized her for being political.”
But never say never. Capital Economics Chief Economist Paul Ashworth, stated, “Given the adverse market reaction we have already seen, the Fed's planned December rate hike is now off the table. There is a possibility that Fed Chair Janet Yellen and even some other Fed Governors (Lael Brainard??) will resign immediately.”
The Federal Open Market Committee has not raised rates since December 2015, once again opting not to in raise rates in November, despite the growing case for raising them.
