Report: Timing unclear about Senate panel consideration for nominations to two open Fed board seats

The timing remains unclear about when the White House will formally nominate a pair of candidates for empty seats on the Federal Reserve Board, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee said Wednesday.

As reported by @Bgov, Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) told the news outlet that the selections of Judy Shelton and Christopher Waller – named by President Donald Trump in separate tweets last summer to fill the two seats on the central bank’s governing board – remain “a work in progress.” Crapo, whose committee considers the Fed governor nominees for recommendations to the full Senate for confirmation, also reportedly said it’s not certain when they will be formally nominated. “I don’t have an update,” the news outlet quoted Crapo saying.

“I would like to see them come to us soon, but right now I don’t know what the timing at the White House is,” Crapo said, according to the news outlet.

In July, shortly before the Independence Day holiday, Trump tweeted that his “intended nominees” for the two open slots on the central bank’s board are bank executive Judy Shelton and economist Christopher Waller. However, the White House has not followed up with either an “intention to nominate” notification or a formal nomination to the Senate for either.

Shelton is now the U.S. executive director for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (appointed to that position by Trump). Waller is now the executive vice president and director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The two would fill (if confirmed by the Senate) two seats on the board that have been open since Janet Yellen (a former chairman) and Stanley Fischer (a former vice chairman) left the board in 2018 and 2017, respectively.