Senate committee okays Stanley Fischer for federal reserve

The Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday endorsed Stanley Fischer to be vice chair of the US Federal Reserve, a nomination that needs confirmation from the full chamber.

Members of the committee gave the green light by voice vote to Fischer, tapped by President Barack Obama in January to be Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s number two.

The panel also approved Lael Brainard, a former Treasury official, to join the Fed’s Board of Governors, and endorsed current board member Jerome Powell for another term.

All three are expected to win Senate approval.

Fischer is a dual US-Israeli citizen who until last year served as the governor of Israel’s central bank.

The 70-year-old was also deputy managing director at the International Monetary Fund, from 1994 to 2001, and prior to that served as chief economist for the World Bank.

At the time of Fischer’s appointment, Obama described him as having “one of the world’s leading and most experienced economic policy minds.”

Fischer would join Yellen at the head of the Fed at a time it seeks to unwind a huge balance sheet of some $4 trillion, by slowly phasing out its bond purchases, known as quantitative easing, that has been in place in some form since 2008 to hold down long-term interest rates.

A full Senate vote has not been scheduled, but the upper house of Congress usually adopts the banking panel’s nomination recommendations.