Senate panel advances Trump’s latest Fed nominees

The Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday approved President Trump’s two most recent nominees to the Federal Reserve Board with bipartisan votes.

The panel voted to recommend Richard Clarida to serve as the Fed’s vice chairman and Michelle Bowman to take the spot on the Fed’s board reserved for a community banker.

The full Senate is expected to easily confirm Clarida and Bowman, two Republicans who fit the mold of Trump’s previous Fed and financial regulatory appointees.

Republicans had high praise for Clarida, an advisor for PIMCO investment bank and a Columbia University professor, and Bowman, the Kansas state bank commissioner and former community bank CEO.

{mosads}While a block of moderate Democrats supported their nominations, their liberal committee colleges said Clarida and Bowman failed to give sufficient answers to their questions about financial stability and the causes of the 2007-8 crisis.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), the committee’s ranking Democrat, said Clarida and Bowman’s responses to written questions appeared to be crafted by Fed staffers, and that the Fed needed nominees “who have their own ideas” about how to regulate the financial system.

“I’m not confident this is the case with these nominees,” Brown said. “I hope I’m wrong.”

The committee voted 20-5 to recommend Clarida, a former Treasury Department and White House aide, to serve as the Fed’s vice chairman and a board member. All Republicans and seven Democrats supported his nomination.

Clarida is widely respected among economists for his research on monetary policy and is seen as a helpful academic compliment to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.

The chairman, a former Treasury undersecretary and investment banker, is the first Fed chief in four decades without a doctorate in economics.

Bowman, who is lesser known in Washington, advanced on an 18-7 vote, with five Democrats joining all Republicans to support her nomination.

Clarida and Bowman now await Senate confirmation with Marvin Goodfriend, who Trump nominated to be a Fed governor in November. The Banking committee recommended Goodfriend’s’ confirmation in February, but Senate conservatives are could block him over his controversial views on monetary policy.