Boston Banker to Be Nominated As Seventh Fed Board Member
President Reagan will nominate John P. LaWare, a Boston banker described as a pragmatist and an advocate of bank deregulation, to the Federal Reserve Board, the White House announced yesterday.</br></br>If LaWare is confirmed by the Senate, his appointment will mean that Reagan has named all seven members of the board, which regulates banks and influences the economy by rationing the supply of money and credit.</br></br>Unlike some of Reagan's previous Fed appointees, LaWare isn't known as an ideological supporter of supply-side economics. Indeed, the 60-year-old banker isn't even a Republican. But administration officials were said to be more interested in appointing a knowledgeable banker and business executive to a Fed Board that is otherwise dominated by economists, including Chairman Alan Greenspan and Vice Chairman Manual Johnson.</br></br>LaWare is "a very meticulous, pragmatic kind of banker," said Robert Eisenmenger, first vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. "He's conservative, but not an ideologue at all." Eisenmenger added that LaWare is very good at "working in a group environment," a quality much admired within the collegial central bank.</br></br>As chairman of Shawmut National Corp. and Shawmut Bank in Boston, LaWare has been a staunch supporter of deregulating the banking industry. He has actively supported legislation to loosen restrictions on interstate banking and ease regulations on the rescue of troubled banks by healthy banks.