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President Joe Biden is nominating Jerome Powell to a second four-year term as Federal Reserve Chair, the White House said in a statement on Monday.
Biden also said he would nominate Lael Brainard, the lone Democrat on the Fed’s Board of Governors and the person who had been considered a possible replacement for Powell, as vice-chair.
“While there’s still more to be done, we’ve made remarkable progress over the last ten months in getting Americans back to work and getting our economy moving again,” Biden said in a statement. “That success is a testament to the economic agenda I’ve pursued and to the decisive action that the Federal Reserve has taken under Chair Powell and Dr. Brainard to help steer us through the worst downturn in modern American history and put us on the path to recovery.”
In choosing Powell, Biden went with the tried and true in a move that is likely to sit well with markets and the global financial system. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose more than 150 points on the news.
Powell has generally received praise for navigating the Fed through the unprecedented economic shock brought on by the coronavirus. In 2020, the Fed responded to the sharp downturn in the economy by providing a firehose of liquidity that helped calm markets and pump trillions into the economy.
“Fundamentally, if we want to continue to build on the economic success of this year, we need stability and independence at the Federal Reserve – and I have full confidence after their trial by fire over the last 20 months that Chair Powell and Dr. Brainard will provide the strong leadership our country needs,” said Biden.
“The steady leadership of Chair Powell and the Federal Reserve helped ensure that America’s economy was able to recover from a once-in-a-generation health and economic crisis,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, a former Fed chair, said in a statement.
