Dudley to Quit. Potentially 5 vacancies to fill on the FOMC. No one knows what the Fed will look like.
The next slot on the Fed opens up: New York Fed President William Dudley will announce his retirement as soon as next week, “several people familiar with his plans” told CNBC. He may stay on till his replacement is found and approved, likely to happen in the spring or summer next year. The New York Fed has already formed a search committee, the people said.
[Update, Nov 6: The New York Fed just confirmed that he’d retire “in mid-2018 to ensure that a successor is in place.”]This is unexpected; his 10-year term will expire in 2019. He could have stayed on for the sake of stability. He is one of the most influential figures on the Fed’s policy-setting Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) and is considered a “dove.”
The 12-member FOMC is composed of:
- The seven members of the Board of Governors which is in the process of being nearly completely turned over
- The president of the New York Fed who is retiring.
- And on a one-year rotating basis four presidents of the remaining 11 regional Federal Reserve Banks.
The president of the New York Fed is special among the heads of the regional Fed banks: That person always serves as vice chair of the FOMC and, unlike the rest of them, votes at every meeting.
So next year the FOMC will be a different animal.
But President Trump doesn’t get to appoint Dudley’s replacement. This decision will be made by the New York Fed’s Board of Directors and will have to be approved by the Fed Board of Governors, which Trump will have an opportunity to load with his appointees.
Of the seven slots on the Board, only four are currently filled. Three are vacant. And a fourth slot might become vacant if Janet Yellen decides to leave.
She serves a 14-year term on the Board. She also serves a four-year term as Chair that will expire in February. Last week, Trump appointed her replacement as Chair, Jerome Powell, who already serves on the Board. For him it was a promotion of sorts. But Yellen may resign from the Board altogether in February when her term as Chair expires. This would create the fourth vacancy on the Board.
Plus Dudley’s vacant slot on the FOMC.
In early October Trump nominated and the Senate approved Randal Quarles as a member of the Board. During his confirmation hearing, Quarles said it was time to roll back some of the regulations that were imposed on banks after they’d threatened to take down the global financial system. He will become the chief bank regulator at the Fed, filling the slot that became vacant in April when Daniel Tarullo resigned unexpectedly.
Quarles was a partner at private equity firm The Carlyle Group, served as undersecretary of the Treasury under President George W. Bush, and is the founder of The Cynosure Group, a private investment firm.
The next Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, is a also an alum of The Carlyle Group and a host of other financial firms, interspersed with gigs at the US Treasury, and now at the Fed.
WHIRRRR makes the revolving door.
Dudley, who worked at Goldman Sachs from 1986 to 2007, was hired to head New York Fed’s markets group, which is in charge of buying and selling the Fed’s assets, and thus was heavily involved in the Fed’s bank bailouts – including its refusal not to bail out Lehman Brothers – and the QE programs during and after the Financial Crisis. He was promoted to president of the New York Fed in 2009. Under his leadership, the New York Fed acquired the assets that now constitute the Fed’s $4.45 trillion balance sheet. And under his leadership, the New York Fed has actually begun the QE unwind.
According to CNBC:
Dudley had told several colleagues he was planning to leave in 2018, and his departure is said not to be related to the decision last week by President Donald Trump to name Fed Governor Jerome Powell as the next Fed Chairman. In doing so, Trump declined to renominate current Chair Janet Yellen, with whom Dudley has worked closely over the past several years.
Of the eight permanent votes on the FOMC – the seven members of the Board of Governors and the president of the New York Fed – only three are currently known if Yellen decides to leave: Jerome Powell, Lael Brainard, and Quarles. The other five are unknowns.
This leaves the decision-making power at the Fed next year in the hands of a group of people that is dominated by unknowns. Monetary policy is undergoing a critical change in direction, with rates being hiked and QE being unwound. While there doesn’t seem to be a lot of airspace between Yellen and Powell at the moment – though that too could change without notice – the rest of this new Fed is mostly unknown and could be off the charts.
The Fed announced its QE unwind in September, and now it’s following through. But what’s happening with its mortgage-backed securities? Read… The Fed Actually Begins its QE Unwind
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Hopefully they’ll keep Neel Kashkari on the sidelines. He seems to be the ultra dove who can’t comprehend systematic risk.
I shouldn’t single him out. Anybody Fed member who thinks bubbles are impossible to identify is dangerous, including Yellen, Bernanke, and others. If they can’t identify financial bubbles, why are they tinkering with the economy? I wouldn’t go to a doctor who couldn’t read a thermometer.
The world economy is a boiling pot of bubbles, but the lazy economists at the Fed can’t see any of them. But then again, these are the same people who argue that QE was a success because they had to keep doing it over and over. In fact, it was so successful that even the slightest wind down is a threat to the economy. I’m sure the Fed has all kinds of plans to bail out the banks after the next crisis, but stopping that crisis isn’t in their job description, and I don’t think any new appointees are going to change that.
Amen. Instead of the captain of the Titanic, we are getting the captain of the Andrea Doria. I think that given Trumps alliance with Goldman Sachs, the changes will be cosmetic at best.
Why are all of the Fed (bankster cartel) governors leaving, well when a ship is sinking, all the _______ abandon the ship. It may be that they fear that our economy will collapse sooner than expected.
Could they have some undisclosed, secret information? I opine that many of the former Fed governors, who gave huge sums to their cronies by bailouts of insolvent banks (who could not have gotten even high interest rate loans from any uncorrupted, sane lender) and commissions, left out of a desire not to be blamed for the consequences of their actions.
It is a shame. I think that Bernake, for example, would have looked great in a Federal prison, orange jumpsuit. It would have brought out the color of his eyes. It is a shame that we do not have a special prosecutor to look into the Fed, a bankster cartel.
I suppose that Trump is now too “wise”, for someone with the emotional maturity of a three year old, to appoint another special prosecutor, seeing as how he will apparently have to pardon so many of his own cronies.
Silly comparisons; the FED economists are scientists while being a doctor is just a profession. Should I put sarc at the end?
Calling them “impossible to identify” is of course a cop-out. If the Fed identifies a bubble, then they may be compelled to act to counter it, in ways that inconvenience powerful people.
Listen, we have achieved a permanent plateau of prosperity.
–Jerome Powell
I thought kashkari was a clown when he ran for CS gov. But as MN Fed chief, he was the only person who actually talked about systemic risk and the need to plan for the next crisis *before* it happens. He came up with a surprisingly reasonable plan (still had problems but was far better than the current policy of throw money at the banks until they puke gold). If course it has no power since he’s in Minneapolis.
IMHO he’d be an intriguing choice but it’s very unlikely precisely because he dare say that the bailout was maybe a tiny, eeny weeny little bit wrong…
Kashkari is one of the only ones who realizes there is a threat of deflation on the horizon, while the Fed is busy fighting phantom inflation.
Kashkari is willfully blind to asset bubbles. He said a few months ago that he cannot see a housing bubble, even after plenty of his colleagues at the Fed saw signs of it. He said that the Fed, even if it could see bubbles, shouldn’t do anything about them. The assumption is that the Fed should cause asset bubbles (via ZIRP and QE), but then refuse to see them or try to tamp down on them, and just let them work their magic.
That guy has an agenda, which became clear ever since his otherwise silly run for governor of CA, which he used as a springboard to get on the map. And I don’t think I like his agenda.
Ugly news, we will have to wait Speculation of who and whom, is useless.
If Yellen goes, Effectively what we have is a FED Governors walkout under P 45.
One of the Biggest public votes of no confidence in an administration, there could possibly be, in the entire History of the FED.
You can Guarantee Dudley and Yelllen discussed this.
Claiming it as a reaction to Yellens dismissal is stretching, at this point.
What the New FED will do and who is still supposition.
However many of the arrows related to what. Indicate Financial institutions being allowed to do when they want, when they want, to whom they want, in a “heads we win tails you loose environment”, Backed-stopped by the American taxpayer..
Sound familiar.
OT
Being a fly on the wall of Pocahontas-es office now, could be amusing, she is probably levitating.
You seem to take this as a bad thing.
The current obama appointed Fed has wrecked the economy, wrecked savers, wrecked pensions, bailed every reckless bank and know NOTHING except trying to avoid any down blip in order to keep the most democrats in the White House.
There is a reason great QE unwind is starting under DJT.
Drain that swamp. The current FED is all part of the swamp.
+++
“One of the Biggest public votes of no confidence in an administration, there could possibly be, in the entire History of the FED.”
Trump stacked his administration with Goldman Sachs corporatists. If you’re anticipating some surge in integrity at the Fed I think you’ll be much disappointed. The only thing Trump is doing with the swamp is filling it with sewage.
“Search committee”, headed by your friendly representatives at Goldman Sachs/JP Morgan.
I do believe you nailed it. If someone had described our situation today to you 20 years ago (assuming you were a working age adult then) would you have believed it? Or would you have taken it as someone trying to grab attention using wildly exaggerated fiction?
20 years ago my reply would have been
“Tell me something I don’t know”
From the end of Breton woods to the Repeal of glass Steagal it was rocky.
Since then, its a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions waiting to happen 2008 was simply, a small warm up act. The US financial industry is still lending to peopel who simply don’t have the ability to ever repay what they are borrowing, to buy things, they dont need.
Based on their current (alleged ability) ability to service that debt.
If the path Yellen set the fed on, is deviated from before at the least the balance sheet is cleared of MBS and reduced to pre 2000 levels.The Entire US and its $. WILL be part of that catastrophe.
I’d like a crack at the job. Would…
-Vote to raise 50 basis points at every meeting until rates hit 7.5%.
-Vote to let 100% of T bills & MBS roll-off (zero repurchases).
-Warn POTUS & Congress that the Fed is in dire need of regular outside audits.
-Take every opportunity to tell the press of the urgency to reinstate Glass/Steagall, begin a return to sound money, and switch to free market set rates.
-And be a thorn in the side and call out the BS from the Fed chair, governors and presidents.
On second thought maybe not such a good idea since I’d be dead of a ‘suicide’ inside of a week.
I would vote for you!!
If WE were allowed to.
um, replace the punch bowl with the dust bowl, because it’s good for your health to tighten the belt and cough a little?
um, ok…….
squeeze those dollars and watch them grow.
We live in a totally different economic climate. Just to think that Easy Al was at the helm for almost 20 years until he was in his 80’s. They were proud to call him The Maestro.
The man was a fool.
“Hurricanes will boost economic activity over the long run.”
“Rising home prices are “locked up.” Consumers should tap their equity to boost the economy.”
— NY FED President William Dudley
At the height of the last crisis, W Bush asked everyone to go out and shop!
Let’s go shopping!
I would quote his wisdom about inflation: Let them eat iPads, or something along those lines.
Those are the fools who believe people in power say what they know or believe.
The dud is only saying what he thinks the crowd is supposed to follow.
And, the bankers know what the dud is selling.
Squeak ! Squeak !
The biggest rats jump first
The rats are going to want an apology for comparing them to bankers.
Society is now dominated by a class of rich dunderheads and their high-paid “experts” and political factotums who are so out of touch with reality and so undeservedly cocksure about their own “greatness” that I tremble at their response to a true crisis they can’t paper over with debt. Can you imagine how this lot (Trump, Merkel, Abe, May, et al) would respond to a global pandemic, or a small asteroid strike, or an accelerating bout of climate change?
I’m 52, and if Nixon or Carter had responded to the Puerto Rican fiasco (where half the people still have no power and drinking water) with the lassitude that Bush showed with Katrina, Obama showed with the Gulf Oil Spill, and Trump has shows daily, they would have been hounded from office. Now, everyone shrugs and just accepts this level of ineptitude as par for the course. It’s terrifying, and almost ubiquitous.
“. . . who are so out of touch with reality . . .”
On the contrary, they know exactly what they’re doing. These are con artists and hypocrites, not idiots. The lies and the promotion of unreality are just part of the con.
” . . . they would have been hounded from office.”
The general population has been conned and disempowered by the perpetrators, so they can’t be hounded from office.
“It’s terrifying, and almost ubiquitous.”
In other news, the foxes, who recently succeeded in their hostile takeover of the henhouse with promises of an abundance of broilers and eggs, are now projecting severe shortages. Naturally the foxes are blaming the roosters for their earlier mismanagement, even though there no longer seem to be any.
People are looking at the data and working out what these idiots have been up to.
It’s time to leg it.
Under the stewardship of Trichet at the ECB, the Euro-zone turned into a slow motion train crash.
He didn’t know what he was doing.
Mark Blythe has been looking at the data for the Euro-zone when Trichet was in charge of the ECB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6vV8_uQmxs&feature=em-subs_digest-vrecs
Greenspan blows the US up:
https://cdn.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/04/Screen-Shot-2017-04-21-at-13.52.41.png
1929 and 2008 stick out like sore thumbs.
It’s ready to blow Alan, raise interest rates fast.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45089000/gif/_45089770_us_rates_oct08_226gr.gif
There were delays while the teaser rate mortgages reset; the new mortgage repayments became unpayable; the defaults and other losses accumulated within the system until everything came crashing down in 2008.
The UK is on a one way trip to a financial crisis from 1980.
https://cdn.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/04/Screen-Shot-2017-04-21-at-13.53.09.png
Booms and busts are the FIC’s tried and true method of consolidating wealth.
Think of the economy as a gas-powered two-cycle money pump: with the expansion stroke the economy is inflated, and with the power stroke money is sent upwards where it is collected and stored. And they’ve introduced improvements to increase efficiency, like multiplying debt which works like a supercharger. Welcome to the machine.
walter map,
Yeah, you get it.
Using my Nostradamus-like powers of prognostication, I foresee that no matter who comes or goes at the Fed, or what Kabuki theater plays out between supposed “hawks” and “doves,” the Fed will do what it has always done: facilitate the concentration of all wealth and power in the hands of its oligarch wire-pullers.
But….But …. but, the US economy is 70% consumer spending… when these guys win/take total control, who will have any money left to spend? When there is no money spent, what is their empire worth? How will they maintain it? Pay for the armies to police the population?
What is their eventual plan? To just kill us all off, except for the few to work and maintain the system?
The end game just seems to me the real end of civilization as we have grown to know it. Why would anyone want that?
No it’s like a parasite. It doesn’t want to kill the host but suck it dry right up to death.
“What is their eventual plan? To just kill us all off, except for the few to work and maintain the system?”
Essentially. Most livestock are non-performing assets and are just wasting the resources of their planet besides, but getting rid of the surplus is bound to get them talked about.
Brainard and Kashkari want the top job if they can get it. They’ll have to wait of course.
Otherwise, it’s a group of power hungry people that understand “the system” they’ve grown up in and made their weath. These are very “intelligent” and resourceful people, make no mistake.
None are interested in signficant reformation or dismantling of the Fed system. It’s too much work and too risky compared to maintaining status quo.
None will see the crisis coming either because they are too imbedded in the system.
“Dudley to Quit. 5 Vacancies on the FOMC.”
Abandon ship!
No one wants to be one of those left holding the bag when the eventual collapse comes. They want to blame the new group.. And probably no one wants to be forced to answer to the dictator who wants loyalty from all those he lords over.
The dimwits at the Fed have managed to blow the largest financial bubble in the history of the world. The fault of their thinking is now weighing on them, and they see no way out. The size of the bubble has forced a tightening program on them as a last ditch measure to defer the pop. And now there is no option to reverse the program without causing the bubble to quickly shoot into the stratosphere and pop.
The are cornered, and baffled. They know it. They are running like lemmings, hoping to push the blame of this historic debacle onto somebody else’s plate. This will be written up in history books and the Fed’s decisions will be mocked for centuries. Quite a legacy.
Given the strictures of the system, I can’t see how they could have acted much differently given the constellation of powers and forces and ideology operative over the past few decades. No one was prepared to bail out the debtors (“moral hazard!!!”) and no one was prepared to raise wages. So the only reflation tool at hand was pump-priming the banks and the rich in the hope of “trickle-down” (you know, “wealth effects”). Trickle-down is baloney but it is fervently believed baloney. Since the only government activity that is permissible under neoliberalism (other than screw-the-bottom austerity) is transferring money to the banks and the rich, that’s what we got.
The dimwits at the Fed have managed to blow the largest financial bubble in the history of the world.
Your post shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the Fed’s true character and role. This private banking cartel was stood up for the express purpose of transferring the wealth and property of the middle and working classes to the Fed’s bankster cohorts. They have succeeded brilliantly in this undertaking, and not because they are “dimwits” – on the contrary, they are diabolically clever. How else would they convince the sheeple they’ve relentlessly screwed over since 1913 that they are a responsible central bank rather than the most successful and pernicious fraud syndicate in human history?
Its unprecedented that a Fed chair with a sound record, and surging markets, ample liquidity, and stable economic conditions should NOT be reappointed. However replacing one Fed head with a perfect match in policy is not much of a change. Its like SCOTUS where political litmus tests are applied, members retire despite the political consequences. When you get to this level of government you realize politics doesn’t make any difference.
Don’t assume the Fed and the banks are one homogeneous community (beyond their shared desire to stick it to the tax payers). With that much change, the fractures within the banking community should become more visible. Crises are not to be wasted. Witness the sacrifice of Lehman during the last crisis.
I guess the panic was gonna affect the holidays sales negatively so they decided to keep the old guard until the middle of next year to avoid a disaster.
“The New Fed Could Be Off the Charts”
And here I thought the current Fed was off the charts.
“Dudley to Quit. 5 Vacancies on the FOMC. No one knows what the Fed will look like.”
My suggestion is Trump nominate replacements for these vacancies with temporary H-1B workers from India and illegal immigrants form Mexico or Brazil so the elites can get a taste of what the rest of us experience in the work force and 2% inflation paradise. And because they will be contract workers, Trump can brag about saving tax dollars by not having to pay benefits and health coverage. That will allow our Fed members to experience the 2% inflation they tell us is happening like when they go to pay out-of-pocket for generic medications like simvastatin or lisinopril going from $10 to $54 for 90…that’s 2% inflation, am I right?
>>5 Vacancies on the FOMC
Hmm. BOG-FRS (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System) right now has only 4 governors, but there should be 7. Since all governors are on the FOMC, that accounts for 3 empty seats (I would not denote these as “vacancies in the FOMC”, they are really vacancies in the BOG-FRS). If Jerome Powell (already a governor) gets approved as chair of BOG-FRS, and Janet Yellen leaves, there will be then be 4 empty governor seats to fill, and the same persons will also fill 4 FOMC seats. Then there is Bill Dudley resigning and leaving BOG-FRS in 2018 sometime. That makes for 5 empty governor seats and their corresponding 5 FOMC seats.
Okay, so I understand the accounting behind the statement that there are 5 BOG-FRS vacancies now, and where the number 5 came from.
However, why has there already 3 empty seats in BOG-FRS for some time now? That is rather unsettling, if you ask me. What is going on here? Why has there not been nominations and appointments to fill these seats?
PS: The acronym BOG-FRS seems particularly suitable. Drain the bog!
I took another look to see how the vacant seats at the BOG-FRS occurred, I hope the table survives
————————————————————
Governor District Start End(sorted)
————————————————————
*Elizabeth A. Duke Philadelphia Aug. 5, 2008 Resigned August 31, 2013.
?Sarah Bloom Raskin Richmond Oct. 4, 2010 Resigned March 13, 2014.
*Jeremy C. Stein Chicago May 30, 2012 Resigned May 28, 2014.
Jerome H. Powell Philadelphia May 25, 2012 Reappointed June 16, 2014.
*Daniel K. Tarullo Boston Jan. 28, 2009 Resigned April 5, 2017.
Stanley Fischer New York May 28, 2014 Appointed Vice Chairman June 16, 2014
*Stanley Fischer New York May 28, 2014 Resigned Oct 13, 2017
Lael Brainard Richmond June 16, 2014
————————————————————
Q: Why are these governors listed with district names next to them? I
don’t think that governors have had to be an official in any particular
district in order to be considered, nor is there formally some kind of
district distribution requirements. May be just an informal arrangement. I could be wrong.(*)
*==governor that resigned but seat has not been filled
?==governor that resigned and seat has been filled (matching on district(*))
Unfortunately multiple spaces do not survive when posting. so the table is not so readable.
I would like to see a governor headcount as a function of time. It looks to me like the BOG-FRS has been operating on less than a full set (7 governors) for some time?
“…operating on less than a full set (7 governors) for some time?”
Yes, that’s correct.
Concerted Fed departures tell many viewers that few governors still believe strongly enough in either the Fed mission or the financial system to want to be around when catastrophes hit. Are their pensions fully funded, and which healthcare plan do they access? The next Fed Dot Plot will be a shooting range target with the dots all clustered center mass.
There is a little good economic news in the low unemployment rate and the high stock market, but that is not much consolation to those seeking their second or third no-benefits job while trying to make ends meet. Inflation numbers have not been very believable to so many shoppers as they look at prices of daily items like food and meds rise.
Devil take the hindmost continues to be the neo-liberal mantra. Sell your financial assets while you still have liquid buyers.
Too many forget the Fed Funds Rate going below 2% from 2001 to 2004 caused a debt problem that really never went away. It was like a drug that replaced real wages. Banksters don’t want to stop this abuse and a lot of people don’t want easy credit to stop.
No matter what best thing dudley can do is leave he is from goldmen sucks and cannot be trusted. Garbage in garbage out.
The economy Is running full speed to the river and the bridge is out. It seems as though the only cure ahead will be massive monetary destruction thru massive bankruptcies. I feel retail problems are just the tip of the iceberg .
The question remains: What will Jerome Powell do if confirmed as BOG-FRS chair? And when will Trump attempt to fill the 3 currently empty seats and presumed eventual 5 seats? With whom?
I’d imagine Goldman or JP Morgan have a window office for him?
“New York Fed President William Dudley will announce his retirement as soon as next week” – thats the information. Dudley knows how to weigth the amounting debt and its consequences. Followers in the Fed will make similar experiences in finding out – too late probably – that it’s dangerous to escape the Fed QE-jungle unwounded.
LoL- so I guess we will have a real shot at dissent in the Fed, with real votes for super austerity- it will be a great bustout for commercial property. Trump will love it, because all of his financing will be solid. The only question becomes how many deals will be available to be scooped up in an economy back to 5% rates, and how that compares to the donkey level 2% rates. Of course, overshoot to 8 or 9 percent is possible.
And that would be a near fatal for the general economy at this point.
House prices would adjust downward at a good clip as well.
So, either keep rates low and enjoy and moribund and boring economy outside of tech spec, or crush leveraged assets.
Nice choice folks, since wage inflation is off the table, and commodities are only stirring because of war in the middle east. Just a little Gulf War stimulus for the commodo producers.
And then back to doom of low rates and low expectations.
In short, the intractability of the problem is now becoming obvious, and the opportunity for missteps is growing. A 1937 false dawn is back on the playing field.
One factor that does not fit well is the fragility of the international trade system, the gradual exit of the US from center stage. http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/10/news/companies/saudi-arabia-aramco-oil-ipo/index.html
We are not even the biggest customer anymore, the Chinese are- so what real hook do we have versus them, or they us? I would note the pro western biz prince mafia was just basically purged- friends of Clinton…
While my concern grow with the dislocations, the 70s show reflation of the last decade has failed, and asset inflation is simply related to gearing.
If we do lose our exorbitant privilege, the dollar drop will be interesting.
But as long as we are perceived as a safe haven for capital, that is off the table.
The new normal would be a return to the banking 3-6-3 world. And the low profits inherent in that are baaaad to the finance world.
And the PE world, and the MBA ounce cutters , and all the other trimmers.
Someday this war’s gonna end…
Someday this war’s gonna end…
i do find it odd this number leaving in such a short time, but given their ages, this may be mere generational change.
oh shit, the kids are in charge.
Ideally the Fed should be off the planet, not off the charts. A nation simply doesn’t need an agency to perform the functions that central banks do.
Normal businesses interacting with normal banks will move the interest rate up and down to keep the businesses and banks running. Saving and borrowing will be encouraged or discouraged when appropriate to restore balance.
What a nation DOES need is a strict and harsh regulator to insure that businesses and banks remain normal … that is, relatively decentralized and NOT monopolistic.