{"id":376156,"date":"2010-03-01T12:11:26","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T17:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/business\/archive\/2010\/03\/fed-vice-chairman-kohn-to-retire-in-june\/36820\/"},"modified":"2010-03-01T12:11:26","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T17:11:26","slug":"fed-vice-chairman-kohn-to-retire-in-june","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/376156","title":{"rendered":"Fed Vice Chairman Kohn To Retire In June"},"content":{"rendered":"

Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald L. Kohn announced<\/a> today that he will retire when his term expires in June. As the second-most powerful U.S. central banker that’s pretty big news. But how significant is the move for U.S. monetary policy?<\/p>\n

The average American — and I’d guess most people reading this — probably never heard of Donald Kohn. Even though he has an incredibly prominent role at the Fed, vice chairman isn’t nearly as public a figure as Chairman. But it’s hard to exaggerate how important a part he has played in U.S. monetary policy over the past few years. As the #2 man, his opinion matters a lot. Only Chairman Bernanke himself has had a bigger impact. <\/p>\n

So why is Kohn retiring? Well, he’s 67 and has worked for the Federal Reserve in some capacity since 1970. It’s pretty easy to see that he’s probably ready for a well-deserved break. And the past few years have likely been particularly stressful, for obvious reasons. <\/p>\n

Kohn’s retirement is a major development for the Obama administration. Even though his term is up in June, the administration now doesn’t need to worry about reappointment: it can just begin the search for a new board member. And the President will also be appointing a new vice chair. The question is whether he’ll opt to promote from within, or give the job to his new appointee. <\/p>\n

How big a change will a new vice chairman have on monetary policy? That depends who the President picks. If he chooses an inflation hawk like current Kansas City Fed President Tom Hoenig<\/a>, then that could influence swifter monetary tightening. If I had to guess though, I would say that the administration will likely focus on someone that would further its regulatory goals. I also suspect it wouldn’t be someone terribly high profile like Larry Summers, who might not like answering to Bernanke. But this definitely gives the Obama administration the opportunity to have a greater voice in Fed policy, which it likely feels shorted on due to the pressure it felt to reappoint Bernanke. <\/p>\n

If you have any thoughts on a good or likely choice for the new vice chairman, feel free to comment below!<\/p>\n



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Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald L. Kohn announced today that he will retire when his term expires in June. As the second-most powerful U.S. central banker that’s pretty big news. But how significant is the move for U.S. monetary policy? The average American — and I’d guess most people reading this — probably never heard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1535,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-376156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1535"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}