St. Louis Fed's Bullard Said He Was Contacted by White House for Fed Board Job -- Update
June 25 2019 - 8:06PM
Dow Jones News
By Paul Kiernan
WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James
Bullard said Tuesday he has been approached by White House
officials "in recent months" about the possibility of serving on
the Fed's board of governors.
Mr. Bullard characterized the discussions as "exploratory in
nature." He said he told the Trump administration that he is happy
in his current position and noted that he currently sits on the
Fed's rate-setting committee. But he declined to provide more
detail or to specify the timing of his most recent contact.
"On the White House question, I don't think I'm going to go any
further. If they want to talk about it, they can," Mr. Bullard told
reporters. "There are lots of feelers, lots of channels, lots of
speculation about this kind of thing, so it's not uncommon at
all."
The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for
comment.
The Trump administration is searching for candidates to fill two
vacancies on the Fed's seven-member board, which helps to set
monetary policy and wide-reaching financial regulation. President
Trump has frequently criticized the Fed for keeping interest rates
too high, likening the 105-year-old central bank, in a Monday
tweet, to "a stubborn child."
Mr. Bullard has tended to favor lower interest rates than some
of his fellow central bankers in recent years. At the Fed's most
recent policy meeting, he cast the sole dissenting vote against
holding rates in their current range of 2.25% to 2.5%, preferring
to lower borrowing costs by a quarter percentage point.
Earlier Tuesday he said in an interview on Bloomberg television
that he didn't think the Fed needed to lower the benchmark
fed-funds rate by more than a quarter point at its next meeting in
late July. He added via a conference call later in the afternoon
that another quarter-point "insurance cut" was likely by the end of
the year.
"If you went one move now and then another move later, you'd
probably be slightly accommodative," Mr. Bullard told reporters.
"That, hopefully, would shore up the inflation expectations that
I've got my eye on, straighten out the yield curve and possibly get
a nice upward slope in the yield curve, and get the probability of
a recession down a little bit from where it is today."
The presidents of the Fed's regional reserve banks, including
the St. Louis Fed, serve rotating, one-year terms as voting members
of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. Members of the
Washington-based board of governors enjoy a permanent vote.
Mr. Trump has nominated four of the five current Fed governors,
including Chairman Jerome Powell. After becoming frustrated with
the Fed's decisions to raise interest rates last year, he began
searching for less conventional candidates who shared his
preference for easy-money policies that might aid the economy.
Bypassing his advisers, Mr. Trump earlier this year announced
plans to nominate conservative pundit Stephen Moore and former
Republican presidential contender Herman Cain, both close allies,
to the central bank board. Both candidates withdrew from
consideration after Senate Republicans expressed reservations about
their qualifications and personal backgrounds.
Mr. Bullard is eligible to serve in his current post until 2026,
when he would face a retirement age limit, according to data
compiled by the Brookings Institution.
Write to Paul Kiernan at paul.kiernan@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 25, 2019 19:51 ET (23:51 GMT)
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