Investing.com - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday announced that Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell is his nominee to be the next chairman of the U.S. central bank.
If confirmed by the Senate, Powell will take over as the new chairman of the Fed in early February, when current Chair Janet Yellen’s four-year term expires.
The choice of Powell is a departure in a long tradition of reappointing Fed chairs to a second term.
Powell, a Republican, was appointed to the Fed’s board of governors in 2012 by President Barack Obama. He was confirmed for a full term in 2014.
Before joining the Fed board, Powell worked as an investment banker for the Carlyle Group and as a scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
He is likely to maintain a steady course of gradual but cautious rate increases while shrinking the central bank’s large portfolio of bonds.
Powell has also signaled openness to watering down Dodd-Frank rules that were put in place after the global financial crisis.
The position of Fed vice chairman is also open, but U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said that the administration does not plan on nominating both a Fed chairman and vice chairman at the same time.
The Fed, which held a two-day policy meeting this week, left its benchmark rate unchanged but failed to deter investor expectations for a year-end interest rate increase after it downplayed hurricane-related disruptions, pointing to labor market strength and solid economic growth.