Page 17 - The GSE Report March-April 2018

MONETARY POLICY MJARN.U-AARPYR.20210818
MONETARY POLICY
President Trump nominates Richard Clarida and Michelle Bowman to the Federal Reserve board
President Trump has nominated Richard Clarida, a Columbia University professor of economics who advises fund manager Pimco, to serve as vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Clarida would replace Stanley Fischer as vice chair, who stepped down in October.
The president also nominated Michelle Bowman, who has served as a commissioner of the Kansas State Bank Commission since 2017, to fill a position on the Fed’s Board of Governors that’s reserved for a commissioner with community banking experience. This seat, reserved
for a policymaker with experience with financial institutions with less than $10 billion in assets, has remained opened since 2014. Bowman’s family owns the Farmers and Drovers Bank of Council Grove, KS, where she served as vice president until her appointment as a state banking commissioner. Previously, Bowman served on the staff of former Senator Bob Dole (R-KS) and a deputy to former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.
“[Bowman] will be sensitive to the whole body of mortgage and capital regulations, which have become onerous on smaller banks,” said Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America. “That is a perspective that most of the time has been missing” at the Fed. (Reuters, Jason Lange, 04/16/18)
Beware the flattening yield curve
In Thoughts from the Front Line, analyst John Mauldin wrote
...[T]he yield curve is still abnormally flat. The gap between two-year and ten-year Treasury yields hasn’t been this low since before the last recession.
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