Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell confirmed by the Senate for a second term

As he and his colleagues battle an agonizing inflation battle, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell found out Thursday that he will serve another term in office.

The Senate voted 80 to 19 to give Powell his second four-year central bank presidency. Ending the long-delayed vote that has been brewing since President Joe Biden nominated the 69-year-old former investment banker again in November.

The delays came as senators deliberated about other candidates Biden has presented to the central bank. Sarah Bloom Raskin withdrew her name after the controversy over her appointment, while the appointments of Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson were only recently confirmed as governors.

In selecting Powell, Biden picks a policymaker that President Donald Trump put first into the position, who has proceeded to ridicule the chairman and his fellow policymakers as “capital holders” when they raise interest rates.

Then Powell found himself in the middle of one of the country’s most serious crises when the Covid-19 virus swept into a global pandemic in March 2020.

He orchestrated a series of maneuvers aimed at pulling the nation out of its worst economic downturn in history, using a combination of lending programs and market strengthening combined with near-zero interest rate cuts, and devising a bond-buying program that would blow up the Fed. . Holdings to $9 trillion.

Recently, Powell and the Fed faced another crisis – the worst rise in inflation since the early 1980s, with rate increases of more than 8% annually over the past two months. Powell has faced some criticism for moving too slowly to counter the threat, even though the Federal Reserve last week raised interest rates by half a percentage point, the most aggressive move in 22 years.

In a rare digression last week, Powell addressed the public directly and said the Fed was firmly committed to lowering rates and would use all the tools at its disposal to do so.