New York Fed Begins Search For Next President

The New York Federal Reserve has begun its search for its next president to follow outgoing Chief William Dudley. According to reports in Bloomberg Markets, the list of potential candidates is long.

Reports on Monday (Jan. 1) said 10 members of the Fed’s advisory boards were interviewed by the publication to understand what they’re looking for in the next president. A few standout themes emerged, including the desire for a leader “with market expertise, crisis management chops, strong leadership abilities, an eye on inequality and an ear for regional trends,” the publication stated.

Current considerations include former Treasury Economist Karen Dynan, Northwestern University Economist Janice Eberly, UBS Securities Economist Seth Carpenter and Sandie O’Connor from JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Advisory board members said New York University’s Stern School of Business outgoing Dean Peter Blair Henry is also in consideration, as are former head of the New York Fed’s Markets Group Brian Sack and former senior Fed board staffer Nellie Liang.

There was no apparent consensus in the interviews about whether the next president should be an economist, however. Some advisors are reportedly calling for a woman or a minority to fill the role.

Reports said the Fed’s search committee will have major implications for the Federal Reserve System, which saw another major leadership change when Jerome Powell was nominated to succeed Janet Yellen as chairman; reports noted that President Donald Trump nominated Randal Quarles to fill the position of Vice Chairman of Supervision last July.

Joseph Carbone, chief executive at workforce development agency The WorkPlace and a member of the NY Fed’s Community Advisory Group, told the publication what he hopes to find in the next president.

“I’m hoping for someone who is as sensitive to information that’s non-conventional, non-traditional, as Bill Dudley was,” he stated. “I want someone who’s going to be willing to look deeply into the numbers and spend as much time talking about the forgotten population.”

Dudley is reportedly planning to exit the post in the middle of this year. The New York Fed expects the process of finding his replacement to take up to nine months.