Biden will name two top economic advisers

President Joe Biden will appoint the vice president of the Federal ReserveLael Brainard, as the new director of its National Economic Council, a key person in coordinating policies, dialogue with business leaders and negotiations with Congress.

Biden will also name his adviser Jared Bernstein as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, according to an official source familiar with the plans, who asked not to be named because the official announcement had not been made.

The Brainard and Bernstein appointments come at a sensitive time for the US economy. Unemployment is at 3.4%, almost a 54-year low, but inflation remains high at 6.4% and there are fears of an imminent recession.

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Brainard will succeed Brian Deese, who helped orchestrate several legislative wins for Biden, including pandemic aid, infrastructure spending and investments in computer chip production.

Brainard, 61, has a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. During Bill Clinton’s presidency, she was deputy director of the National Economic Council and under Barack Obama she was assistant secretary for international affairs at the Treasury Department. She joined the Federal Reserve in 2014 as governor and was nominated by Biden for vice president. Her husband is Kurt Campbell, an expert on Asian issues for the National Security Council.

Bernstein is on the Council of Economic Advisers where he will succeed current President Cecilia Rouse, who will return to Princeton University. Interested in labor markets and economic inequality, Bernstein worked as an adviser to Biden when he was vice president under President Obama.

Brainard’s departure from the Federal Reserve comes as the US central bank fine-tunes its inflation strategy without triggering a serious recession. Brainard has been a supporter of keeping interest rates low to stimulate employment, counterbalancing supporters of higher rates to combat inflation.

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In a speech last month, Brainard argued that fighting inflation might not have detrimental effects on the job market, like the mass layoffs that other Fed officials, including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, have warned about. . Instead, he said companies could be forced to cut prices and cut profit margins in the face of falling demand, which would help tame inflation.

Source: AP