Senate Banking Panel Approves Three Fed Nominees

WASHINGTON — The Senate Banking Committee voted Tuesday to advance three nominations to the Federal Reserve Board.

The panel approved by voice vote the nominations of Stanley Fischer, a former governor of the Bank of Israel, Lael Brainard, the U.S. Treasury Department's former undersecretary for international affairs, and current Fed Gov. Jerome Powell.

The committee also advanced the nominations of J. Mark McWatters to join the board of the National Credit Union Administration and Gustavo Velasquez Aguilar to be an assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. All five nominations must still be approved by the full Senate.

The three Fed nominees have underscored the growing attention the central bank is paying to financial stability concerns amid its two other mandates of employment and price stability.

Powell, who has served on the board since 2012, has been nominated for a second term that would expire in 2028.

Brainard, who had been in charge of currency policy and working with G20 central banks and finance ministers during the European financial crisis, is nominated for a 12-year term.

Fischer is a world-renowned economist, who previously served as the first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund. He has been nominated to fill the spot of Vice Chair Janet Yellen, who now chairs the board.

With a number of seats left open on the seven member Fed board, confirmation of the three nominees is considered critical, particularly as Yellen continues to unwind the central bank's unprecedented easy-money policies.