ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 24, 1997 TAG: 9704240044
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: DAVE SKIDMORE ASSOCIATED PRESS
If they are confirmed, Clinton appointees would hold five of seven seats on the powerful board.
President Clinton's latest two picks for the Federal Reserve Board fit the mold of his previous nominees - moderate, mainstream, well-credentialed. They aren't likely to deter the central bank from its inflation-fighting mission, economists said.
Pending a final screening process, Clinton has selected Michigan economist Edward M. Gramlich and New York banking consultant Roger W. Ferguson Jr.
If the two win Senate confirmation, Clinton appointees would hold five of seven seats on the board of the powerful central bank, which determines borrowing costs for millions of American businesses and consumers and regulates the nation's largest banking companies.
Gramlich, 57, would be returning to the agency where he got his professional start in the 1960s. Ferguson, 45, would become the third black to serve on the board and the first since the 1986 resignation of a Jimmy Carter appointee, Emmett J. Rice.
Neither has a particular background in monetary policy. Instead, both are described as pragmatic team players and policy experts with impeccably stellar academic backgrounds. They could be expected to mesh well with Chairman Alan Greenspan, a Republican reappointed by Clinton last year, and the other board members - all generally regarded as moderates.
Ferguson, the son of a teacher and Army cartographer, earned a law degree and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
Gramlich earned a Ph.D. at Yale and served as deputy director and acting director of the Congressional Budget Office in 1986 and 1987. He is dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
LENGTH: Short : 43 linesby CNB