Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System | |
---|---|
United States Federal Reserve System | |
Style | Mr. Chairman |
Member of | Board of Governors Open Market Committee |
Reports to | United States Congress |
Seat | Eccles Building Washington, D.C. |
Appointer | President with Senate advice and consent |
Term length | Four years, renewable (as Chair) 14 years, non-renewable (as Governor) |
Constituting instrument | Federal Reserve Act |
Formation | August 10, 1914 |
First holder | Charles Sumner Hamlin |
Deputy | Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve |
Salary | Executive Schedule, Level I[1] |
Website | www.federalreserve.gov |
The chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is the head of the Federal Reserve, and is the active executive officer of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The chair shall preside at the meetings of the Board.[2]
The chair serves a four-year term after being nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate; the officeholder serves concurrently as member of the Board of Governors. The chair may serve multiple terms (consecutively or non-consecutively), pending a new nomination and confirmation at the end of each term, with William McChesney Martin as the longest serving chair from 1951 to 1970 and Alan Greenspan as a close second. The chairs cannot be dismissed by the president before the end of their term.[3]
The current chair is Jerome Powell, who was sworn in on February 5, 2018.[4][5][6][7] He was nominated to the position by President Donald Trump on November 2, 2017 and later confirmed by the Senate.[8] He was nominated for a second four-year term by President Joe Biden, later confirmed by the Senate and sworn in on May 23, 2022.[9]
1935 reorganization
Section 203 of the Banking Act of 1935 changed the name of the "Federal Reserve Board" to the "Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System," the "governor" of the Board as the "chairman" and the "vice governor" as the "vice chairman" of the Board, and renamed "members" of the Board as "governors."[10] The Banking Act of 1935 also made the following structural changes:
- increased the number of members of the Board appointed by the President from six to seven
- required the President to designate one of the persons appointed as "chairman" of the Board and one as "vice chairman" of the Board, each to serve in such role for a term of four years
- specified that the appointive members in office on the date of the act should continue to serve until February 1, 1936, or until their successors were appointed and had qualified; thereafter, the members' terms should be 14 years
- specified that the ex officio members in office on the date of the act (the Secretary of the Treasury and the Comptroller of the Currency) were to continue to serve as ex officio members only until February 1, 1936, but made no further provision for ex officio members
- provided that the "chairman of the Board, subject to its supervision, shall be its active executive officer"
In the 1935 Act, the district heads, who had been labeled the governors, received the title of president (e.g., "president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis").[11]
The directors' salaries were significantly lower (at $12,000 when first appointed in 1914[12]) and their terms of office were much shorter prior to 1935. In effect, the Federal Reserve Board members in Washington, D.C., were significantly less powerful than the presidents of the regional Federal Reserve Banks prior to 1935.[13]
Appointment process
As stipulated by the Banking Act of 1935, the president may designate to serve as Chairman of the Board for four-year terms with the advice and consent of the Senate, from among the sitting governors.[2][14][15][16] The Senate Committee responsible for vetting a Federal Reserve chair nominee is the Senate Committee on Banking.
Duties of the Fed chair
By law, at meetings of the Board the chairman shall preside, and, in his absence, the vice chairman shall preside. In the absence of the chairman and the vice chairman, the Board shall elect a member to act as chairman pro tempore.[17]
Under the chair’s leadership, the Board’s responsibilities include analysis of domestic and international financial and economic developments. The board also supervises and regulates the Federal Reserve Banks, exercises responsibility in the nation’s payments system, and administers consumer credit protection laws.[18]
One of the chair's most important duties is to serve as the chair of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which is critical in setting short-term U.S. monetary policy.
By law, the chair reports twice a year to Congress on the Federal Reserve's monetary policy objectives. He or she also testifies before Congress on numerous other financial issues and meets periodically with the treasury secretary, who is a member of the president's Cabinet.[19]
Conflict of interest law
The law applicable to the chair and all other members of the board provides (in part):
No member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System shall be an officer or director of any bank, banking institution, trust company, or Federal Reserve bank or hold stock in any bank, banking institution, or trust company; and before entering upon his duties as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System he shall certify under oath that he has complied with this requirement, and such certification shall be filed with the secretary of the Board.[20]
Salary
Chair of the Federal Reserve is a Level I position in the Executive Schedule and thus earns the salary prescribed for that level (US$226,300, as of January 2022).[21]
List of Fed chairs
The following is a list of past and present chairs of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. A chair serves for a four-year term after appointment, but may be reappointed for several consecutive four-year terms. Since the Federal Reserve was established in 1914, the following people have served as chair.[a][22]
# | Portrait | Name (birth–death) |
Term of office[b] | Tenure length | Appointed by | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Start of term | End of term | |||||
- | William Gibbs McAdoo (1863–1941) |
December 23, 1913 | August 10, 1914 | 230 days | ex officio[c] | |
1 | Charles Sumner Hamlin (1861–1938) |
August 10, 1914 | August 9, 1916 | 1 year, 365 days | Woodrow Wilson | |
2 | William P. G. Harding (1864–1930) |
August 10, 1916 | August 9, 1922 | 5 years, 364 days | ||
3 | Daniel Richard Crissinger (1860–1942) |
May 1, 1923 | September 15, 1927 | 4 years, 137 days | Warren G. Harding | |
4 | Roy A. Young (1882–1960) |
October 4, 1927 | August 31, 1930 | 2 years, 331 days | Calvin Coolidge | |
5 | Eugene Meyer (1875–1959) |
September 16, 1930 | May 10, 1933 | 2 years, 236 days | Herbert Hoover | |
6 | Eugene Robert Black (1873–1934) |
May 19, 1933 | August 15, 1934 | 1 year, 88 days | Franklin D. Roosevelt | |
7 | Marriner S. Eccles[d] (1890–1977) |
November 15, 1934 | January 31, 1948 | 13 years, 77 days | ||
8 | Thomas B. McCabe (1893–1982) |
April 15, 1948 | March 31, 1951 | 2 years, 350 days | Harry S. Truman | |
9 | William McChesney Martin (1906–1998) |
April 2, 1951 | January 31, 1970 | 18 years, 304 days | Harry S. Truman Dwight D. Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson | |
10 | Arthur F. Burns[e] (1904–1987) |
February 1, 1970 | January 31, 1978 | 7 years, 364 days | Richard Nixon | |
11 | G. William Miller (1925–2006) |
March 8, 1978 | August 6, 1979 | 1 year, 151 days | Jimmy Carter | |
12 | Paul Volcker (1927–2019) |
August 6, 1979 | August 11, 1987 | 8 years, 5 days | Jimmy Carter Ronald Reagan | |
13 | Alan Greenspan[f] (born 1926) |
August 11, 1987 | January 31, 2006 | 18 years, 173 days | Ronald Reagan George H. W. Bush Bill Clinton George W. Bush | |
14 | Ben Bernanke (born 1953) |
February 1, 2006 | January 31, 2014 | 7 years, 364 days | George W. Bush Barack Obama | |
15 | Janet Yellen (born 1946) |
February 3, 2014 | February 3, 2018 | 4 years, 0 days | Barack Obama | |
16 | Jerome Powell[g] (born 1953) |
February 5, 2018 | Incumbent | 4 years, 153 days | Donald Trump Joe Biden |
See also
Notes
- ^ Chair was originally known as Governor before August 23, 1935, and were then designated as Chairman until Yellen became the first woman to be Chair on February 3, 2014.
- ^ The start date given here for each officeholder is the day they took the oath of office, and the end date is the day of they term expiration, resignation, or retirement.
- ^ Upon passage of the Federal Reserve Act on December 23, 1913, United States Secretary of the Treasury became ex officio chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and a member of the Reserve Bank Organization Committee (RBOC). Secretaries to serve in this role until the Banking Act of 1935, approved Aug. 23, 1935, which became effective on Feb. 1, 1936, ended ex-officio membership at the Federal Reserve. Fed leader initially designate as Governor and Active Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Board became the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System after that. For this list Governors perceived as heads of the Federal Reserve System since establishment of position on August 10, 1914; because, treasury secretary is a political appointment served at the pleasure of the president, while Federal Reserve is an independent within the government agency.
- ^ Served as chairman pro tempore, from February 3 to April 15, 1948.
- ^ Served as chairman pro tempore, from February 1 to March 8, 1978.
- ^ Served as chairman pro tempore, from March 3 to June 20, 1996, while awaiting confirmation by the United States Senate for his third term as chairman.
- ^ Served as chair pro tempore, from February 5 to May 23, 2022, while awaiting confirmation by the United States Senate for his second term as chair.
References
- ^ 5 U.S.C. § 5312
- ^ a b see 12 U.S.C. § 242
- ^ "Can the President Fire the Chairman of the Federal Reserve?". Archived from the original on July 27, 2020. Retrieved August 26, 2019.
- ^ "Jerome H. Powell sworn in as Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System". Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Archived from the original on February 6, 2018. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
- ^ Appelbaum, Binyamin (February 4, 2018). "Powell Takes Over as Fed Chief as Economy Starts to Show Strain". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
- ^ NPR. "Senate Confirms Jerome Powell As New Federal Reserve Chair". Retrieved February 3, 2018.
- ^ Cox, Jeff (January 31, 2018). "Yellen leaving Fed Saturday, Powell to be sworn in Monday". CNBC. Retrieved February 3, 2018.
- ^ Gensler, Lauren (November 2, 2017). "Trump Taps Jerome Powell As Next Fed Chair In Call For Continuity". Forbes.
- ^ Lane, Sylvan (May 23, 2022). "Biden's Fed nominees sworn into office". The Hill. Retrieved May 24, 2022.
- ^ Sec. 203, Banking Act of 1935, Public Law no. 305, 49 Stat. 684, 704 (Aug. 23, 1935).
- ^ Richardson, Gary; Komai, Alejandro; Gou, Michael (November 22, 2013). "Banking Act of 1935". www.federalreservehistory.org. Archived from the original on November 21, 2020. Retrieved June 12, 2021.
- ^ "The Reserve Board Nominations". The Independent. July 20, 1914. Retrieved August 21, 2012.
- ^ Meltzer, Allan H. (2003). A history of the Federal Reserve: Volume 1, 1913-1951. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- ^ "The Fed - Board Members". Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. February 21, 2018. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
- ^ "The Structure of the Federal Reserve System". Federalreserve.gov. Retrieved April 24, 2015.
- ^ Federal Reserve (January 16, 2009). "Board of Governors FAQ". Federal Reserve. Archived from the original on January 17, 2009. Retrieved January 16, 2009.
- ^ see 12 U.S.C. § 244
- ^ "The Structure and Functions of the Federal Reserve System". www.federalreserveeducation.org. February 21, 2019. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
- ^ "Chair of the Federal Reserve Board". www.stlouisfed.org. February 12, 2019. Retrieved June 12, 2018.
- ^ 12 U.S.C. § 244
- ^ "Rates of Basic Pay for the Executive Schedule" (PDF). OPM. January 1, 2022. Retrieved January 2, 2022.
- ^ "Chairs". Membership of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 1914–present. The Federal Reserve Board. February 5, 2018. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
Further reading
- "Executive Order 11110 - Amendment of Executive Order No. 10289 as Amended, Relating to the Performance of Certain Functions Affecting the Department of the Treasury". The American Presidency Project. June 4, 1963 – via UCSB.edu.
- Andrews, Edmund L. (November 5, 2005). "All for a more open Fed". New Straits Times. p. 21.
- Beckhart, Benjamin Haggott. 1972. Federal Reserve System. [New York]: American Institute of Banking.
- Shull, Bernard. 2005. The fourth branch: the Federal Reserve's unlikely rise to power and influence. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.
External links
- Official website
- Public Statements of the Chairs of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, via the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank
- Nomination hearings, conducted in the Senate, for Chairs and Members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Timeline of Federal Reserve Chairs with related resources