U.S. News: Fed Nominees Back Policies to Reduce Unemployment
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration's nominees to the Federal Reserve Board stressed the importance of fighting a weak economy, indicating support for policies aimed at reducing the high unemployment rate.</br></br>"Over the next few years, the Fed must craft policies that ensure that our economy accelerates its progress along the recovery path it has begun to trace," Janet Yellen, the nominee for Fed vice chairman who has served as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco since 2004, told the Senate Banking Committee. "With unemployment still painfully high, job creation must be a high priority of monetary policy."</br></br>Ms. Yellen appeared at a confirmation hearing Thursday alongside two other nominees to become Fed governors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Peter Diamond and Maryland financial regulator Sarah Bloom Raskin.</br></br>If confirmed to the seven-member Fed board, the trio would likely push the balance of power at the Fed toward those who worry more that the economy isn't expanding quickly enough rather than those worried about the risk of unwelcome inflation.</br></br>Senate Banking Chairman Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) noted that recent data suggested that the economy was moving toward price deflation. "It is evident that the economy is going to need all the help the Fed can provide over the coming year," he said.