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Senate Banking Committee Approves Jerome Powell as Fed Chair

The U.S. Senate Banking Committee met in full open session this morning and approved Jerome Powell as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The vote was 22-1 in favor, with Senator Elizabeth Warren as the sole dissenting vote.

The matter must now go to a full Senate vote before Powell can officially be confirmed for the position.

President Trump nominated Powell as Fed Chair on November 2. A Federal Reserve Board governor who previously worked as a private-equity executive, Powell will succeed current Fed Chair Janet Yellen. After Powell’s nomination, Yellen announced on November 20 that she would be resigning from the Federal Reserve Board in February 2018, rather than serving out the remainder of her term through 2024.

Powell’s nomination met little resistance in the Senate. Although Powell is a Republican and was nominated by President Trump, Democrats voted for him almost unanimously in 2012 and 2014 when he was nominated for the Fed board by President Obama.

During a June 1 speech to the Economic Club of New York, Powell said, "While the recent performance of the labor market might warrant a faster pace of tightening, inflation has been below target for five years and has moved up only slowly toward 2%, which argues for continued patience, especially if that progress slows or stalls."

About Author: David Wharton

David Wharton, Editor-in-Chief at the Five Star Institute, is a graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington, where he received his B.A. in English and minored in Journalism. Wharton has nearly 20 years' experience in journalism and previously worked at Thomson Reuters, a multinational mass media and information firm, as Associate Content Editor, focusing on producing media content related to tax and accounting principles and government rules and regulations for accounting professionals. Wharton has an extensive and diversified portfolio of freelance material, with published contributions in both online and print media publications. He can be reached at [email protected].
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