Bush Eyes Treasury Official for Fed Post: David Mullins Would Bring Academic Bearing t<
David W. Mullins Jr., a Treasury official with an academic leaning, will soon become President Bush's first appointee to the Federal Reserve Board, according to administration sources.</br></br>A former member of the Harvard Business School faculty who now is assistant secretary of the Treasury for domestic finance, Mullins was one of the main architects of the Treasury's proposal for rescuing the savings and loan industry. He also served as a top adviser to the commission Brady headed that studied the October 1987 stock market crash.</br></br>As a result, if confirmed by the Senate, Mullins would likely be viewedÛÓfor a while, at leastÛÓas Brady's pipeline to the Fed. The</br></br>Treasury chief has had some disagreements this year with Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan over whether the central bank has been keeping interest rates too high.</br></br>But some of Mullins's colleagues were quick to point out that he is an academic with a strait-laced reputationÛÓprecisely the sort of Fed appointee that tends to shed political affiliations and become an institutional loyalist.