President Trump’s pick for Fed governor vowed on Thursday to preserve the central bank’s independence amid the battle between the president and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell over interest rates.
Stephen Miran, the 42-year-old economist who leads the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, told his Senate confirmation hearing that he would not be taking marching orders from anybody when helping to set US monetary policy.
President Trump nominated Stephen Miran, a long-time economic adviser, to become a Fed governor after the shock resignation of Adriana Kugler. REUTERS“I will act independently as the Federal Reserve always does,” Miran told lawmakers in Washington D.C. at a hearing that comes after the shock resignation of Joe Biden appointee Adriana Kugler.
He said he plans to take an unpaid leave instead of stepping down from the White House because he would only be filling a short-term slot on the seven-member Fed board.
If confirmed, Miran would be the first modern-day Fed board member to maintain such close ties to the White House.
Left-wing Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said the Fed would be “tainted” if Miran succeeds in becoming a governor because he would simply do the president’s bidding. Getty ImagesHard-left Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA.) claimed that the economist would be “Donald Trump’s puppet” if he succeeds in taking up the position.
Senator Tina Smith (D-MN.) also hit out at the White House during the hearing, telling Miran: “Your nomination is getting rushed because the president is frustrated with the Fed for not cutting rates, and he wants loyalists on the Fed’s board.”
Miran’s hearing began just an hour before the Department of Justice said it was opening an investigation into Kugler’s former counterpart, Lisa Cook, another Biden-era nominee, for alleged mortgage fraud.
Trump has said he is firing Cook over the accusations, but she has refused to step down and sued to block her from being ousted from the job she took in 2022.
She denies the claims against her, but Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte says she listed multiple properties as her primary residence to allegedly obtain more generous terms on her home loans.
“A less independent Fed would likely favor more aggressive rate cuts, reflected by lower rates at the front end of the Treasury yield curve, at the expense of higher inflation, captured by higher rates at the long end of the curve,” Oxford Economics analysts warned last Friday.
