Each January there is turnover of at least four of the eleven seats on the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC). The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is responsible for
the discount rate and reserve requirements, and the Federal Open Market
Committee is responsible for open market operations. Here is a link to a previous post with some additional background on the FOMC and the nine 2010 members.
The new members for 2011 will be presidents from four of the 12 Regional Bank Branches. The four Branches are in Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas and Minneapolis. In addition, Janet Yellen, President of the San Francisco Branch, and Sarah Bloom Raskin, formerly the Commissioner of Financial Regulation for the State of Maryland, (the state ranks #12 as of 12/31/2010 on the unofficial problem bank list) were each appointed Governor's on The Fed Board last October, making them long-term members. In Yellen's appointment her vote is retained past 2010 because her Branch moves to the non-voting alternate member list for the 2011 term. Non-voting Reserve Bank presidents attend the meetings of the Committee,
participate in the discussions, and contribute to the Committee's
assessment of the economy and policy options.
Below is a look at representative quotes from speeches made recently by each ot the new members. Bloom Raskin has given only one speech as a board member. These might provide helpful background when the time comes to speculate about whether the program of quantittative easing gets extended. The current program is scheduled to stop by the end of June 2011.
The speech by Kocherlakota is given to an audience of college students and so he talked in terms that more people can understand. Many of the other speeches are weighted with econo jargon. Never-the-less, a quick browse will be enlightening for understanding more about the Fed's practices and plans for managing through the policy challenges that the economies of the world are faced with.