By Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama nominated a former Treasury official from the George H.W. Bush administration and a Harvard economist to fill two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
The nominees, Jerome H. “Jay” Powell and Jeremy C. Stein, would serve 14-year terms on the board if they are confirmed by the Senate.
“I am grateful that these individuals have agreed to serve their nation at this important time for our economy,” Obama said Tuesday. “Their distinguished backgrounds and experience coupled with their impressive knowledge of economic and monetary policy make them tremendously qualified to serve in these important roles.”
Powell is a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. He served as undersecretary of the Treasury for finance under Bush, a Republican.
Stein is on the economics faculty at Harvard. In 2009, he served on the staff of the National Economic Council and was a senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.
Obama is trying to get the seven-member Federal Reserve Board back to full strength for the first time since mid-2010 after running into difficulty with one of his nominees this year. Nobel Prize-winning economist Peter Diamond was nominated in 2010 along with Janet L. Yellen and Sarah Bloom Raskin.
Yellen and Raskin were confirmed by the Senate, but Diamond ran into strong opposition from Republicans and withdrew in June.
