Why Do Federal Reserve Board Seats Remain Unfilled?
Mark Thoma's view:
Why Do Federal Reserve Board Seats Remain Unfilled?: Right now there are two unfilled positions on the seven member Federal Reserve Board. If nothing is done to fill those positions, the number will increase to three.... It’s not exactly clear what has taken the administration so long to propose people to fill the open Board seats except fear of obstructionism from the other side.... The administration should have tried to fill the positions in any case, obstructionism or not, given the importance of doing all we can to recover from the recession.... The number of open positions is a large fraction of the Federal Reserve Board, and it skews the balance of power on the Federal Open Market Committee (where monetary policy is decided) toward the regional banks.... By filling the open positions, president Obama could have given the current Board a better chance of dealing with the many complex problems it needs to address....
[S]peculation recently about potential candidates... the list is skewed toward... specialists in the conduct of monetary policy. The Board... also needs experts in financial markets, people with a thorough understanding of all facets of financial markets and the assets that are traded on them, and it needs experts in financial market regulation as well.... I still wonder if the Board has sufficient expertise in financial markets and institutions, so perhaps one of the three open positions could be devoted to filling needs in that area...
