No. of Recommendations: 20
I haven’t seen this mentioned here (perhaps I missed it?) even though it happened over a week ago:
On December 11th, the Fed’s Board of Governors unanimously voted to reappoint 11 of its 12 regional bank presidents to new five-year terms. The only exception was Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, who had already announced his retirement. This would normally be the most boring procedural news imaginable. Regional bank presidents get reappointed all the time. Their terms were set to expire in February anyway. The Fed typically waits until much closer to the deadline to handle this stuff.
But this wasn’t typical. The reappointment came weeks early, and it came just eight days after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly floated a plan to veto any regional Fed president who hadn’t lived in their district for at least three years. He named names at the New York Times DealBook Summit. Three or four current presidents, he said, had ties to New York. The implication was clear: the administration wanted leverage over these positions when reappointments came due in February.
Then, quietly, the Fed moved first.
The vote was unanimous. That includes all three Trump-appointed governors: Stephen Miran, Michelle Bowman, and Christopher Waller. Miran is perhaps the most interesting name on that list. He’s on temporary leave from his job as chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers while he serves on the Fed board. Before joining the administration, he co-authored a paper calling for sweeping changes to reduce Fed independence, including giving the president at-will power to fire Fed board members and bank presidents. JPMorgan analysts warned his appointment “fuels an existential threat” to the Federal Reserve Act. And yet Miran voted to reappoint all 11 regional presidents.
University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers put it bluntly on X: “If I’m reading this properly, they just Trump-proofed the Fed.”
There’s a bit of a pony here in that the Supremes could still decide Trump can fire any or all of the Fed governors at will, although that would surely cause chaos in the markets.
But it’s a deft move, with the Fed deciding to move to protect itself - even those who are inclined to give the President what he wants (rate cuts), and it now matters less who the Chair will be, since that position still only has a single vote.
