Christina Romer, one of U.S. President Barack Obama’s top economic advisers, Friday said she won’t be taking up a job at the Federal Reserve and will be staying on at the White House.
“I love my current job and I’m not going anywhere,” White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Romer said during a visit at the Wall Street Journal offices Friday.
After Vice Chairman Donald Kohn this week said he would step down from the Fed board in June, leaving three vacancies on the seven-member body, U.S. President Barack Obama has the chance to reshape the Fed. Romer was one of the names floating around as a possible successor following Kohn’s announcement.
Among the possibilities for the vice chairman slot are Janet Yellen, who has been president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco since 2004, and Laurence Meyer, a former board member and now a private Fed watcher.
Alan Krueger, a Princeton University labor economist who is now assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy, and Jeremy Stein, a Harvard University finance professor who did a brief turn in the Obama administration last year, are other names that have surfaced this week.
Another name circulating as a possibility for the Fed board: Peter Diamond, 69 years old, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who has had a particular interest in Social Security — and has crafted Social Security reform proposals with White House budget chief Peter Orszag.