BofA Has Two Questions For Ex-Carlyle Partner And Multi-Millionaire Fed Chair, Jay Powell

On Thursday afternoon, around 3pm, Donald Trump will officially nominate Jerome Powell to be the next Chair of the Federal Reserve, replacing Janet Yellen when her term is up on February 1st. According to virtually every financial analyst, the former Carlyle Partner, Jay Powell, represents “continuity” on the Federal Reserve and would conduct monetary policy in a similar fashion as Yellen. As a result, Powell will proceed with the current balance sheet normalization schedule and continue to guide markets toward the “dots”. He is also expected to put a greater priority on scaling back financial market regulation, working with Randy Quarles who is the newly appointed Vice Chair for Supervision.
While we presented key recent soundbites from Powell speeches yesterday, here is some more background:
Jerome Powell is a trained lawyer and not an economist. Powell has been a Fed Governor since 2012 and was involved in the decision-making behind QE3 and then policy normalization in recent years. Prior to joining the Board, he was a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a partner at the Carlyle Group, and worked at the Treasury under the GWH Bush administration.
Powell is a Republican who built a vast wealth as a partner at Carlyle. Powell’s latest financial disclosure from June lists his net worth between $19.7 million and $55 million. If he gets the job, Powell would be the richest Fed chair since banker Marriner Eccles, who held the position from 1934 to 1948, according to the Washington Post.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Nov 2, 2017.