Bush to Name Bernanke
As
New Fed Chairman
A WALL STREET JOURNAL
ONLINE NEWS, October 24, 2005
WASHINGTON -- President Bush
plans to name Ben Bernanke, the current chairman of his Council of Economic
Advisers, to succeed Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Mr. Greenspan has held the post since
1987. The announcement of his replacement is expected at 1 p.m.
The White House hadn't indicated previously when the announcement would come,
but Mr. Greenspan has made clear he plans to leave office when his term is up at
the end of January. Naming a successor to Mr. Greenspan now gives the
Senate time to hold confirmation hearings and act on the nomination before
January.
For months, the three candidates cited most frequently had been Mr. Bernanke,
along with economists Martin Feldstein of Harvard University, and Glenn Hubbard
of Columbia University.
Mr. Bernanke served three years as a Fed governor before joining the
administration in June. Before that, he taught economics at Princeton
University. Mr. Feldstein, who has been on Harvard's faculty since 1969,
was chairman of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to
1984 and an adviser to the 2000 Bush campaign. Mr. Hubbard, who served two
years as chairman of Mr. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, has been at
Columbia since 1994 and currently is dean of its business school.
Choosing a successor to Mr. Greenspan, 79 years old, is one of Mr. Bush's most
important economic decisions. The Fed chairman wields unequaled influence
over U.S. and world economic growth. The Fed's independence also frees its
chairman to stake out policy positions different from those of the president or
Congress, and Mr. Greenspan has used that independence to acquire considerable
sway on nonmonetary policy issues such as the budget, taxes and Social Security.
The nomination of a new Fed chairman comes at a time when the Bush
administration is navigating some difficult political straits. Special
prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald appears close to indicting top White House
officials in the CIA leak investigation, and the president has faced his
resistance from conservatives on his decision to nominate White House counsel
Harriett Miers to the Supreme Court.
Write to the Online Journal's editors at
newseditors@wsj.com.
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