Senate backs Obama's two Fed nominees

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Senate backs Obama's two Fed nominees
from MarketWatch.com - MarketPulse
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The Senate on Thursday approved President Barack Obama's nominees to fill two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The votes mean that the Fed will operate with all seven board members for the first time in six years. The Senate backed Harvard University economics professor Jeremy Stein, a Democrat, and former private-equity executive Jerome Powell, a Republican. Obama had paired the nominees together in order to ease passage. The Fed's unconventional monetary policy in the wake of the financial crisis has been controversial on Capitol Hill, particularly among Republican legislators, putting more scrutiny on nominees to the central bank. Nobel-Prize winning economist Peter Diamond withdrew as a candidate for the Fed board last summer due to Republican opposition.