First Black woman confirmed for Fed as central bank enters Biden era
The Senate on Tuesday gave President Joe Biden his first official stamp on the Federal Reserve at a pivotal moment for the central bank.
Lisa Cook, a Michigan State University economist, was approved on a party-line vote to become the first Black woman ever to get a vote on U.S. interest rate policy, two weeks after Lael Brainard, a Fed board member since 2014, was confirmed for the No. 2 job. Two more nominees, including Chair Jerome Powell, are expected to be easily confirmed soon. The vote for Cook was 51-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.
The task ahead for them won’t be easy: reining in four-decade-high inflation without smothering a nascent economic recovery that has brought the unemployment rate down to 3.6 percent. They will also have to parse economic data amid mangled supply chains, the war in Ukraine and a lingering pandemic, all of which have hampered policymakers’ ability to see the signal through the noise.
“What the Fed is trying to orchestrate right now is this mystical beast: disinflationary intervention that doesn’t throw the economy into a recession,” said Peter Conti-Brown, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/first-black-woman-confirmed-for-fed-as-central-bank-enters-biden-era/ar-AAX8bmc
