Summers and the Fed

Bernanke's replacement seems to be the media story of the hour, even though this story probably won't be resolved until the fall. It is a strange type of discussion where people on opposite sides of the political spectrum like John Taylor and Diane Feinstein are on the same side of the debate - both prefer Janet Yellen.

At this point it looks like the media and pundit backlash makes the idea of a Larry Summers Fed chairmanship somewhat remote, but it would lead to a potentially interesting situation. The Fed chairman doesn't have dictatorial powers - if the FOMC board chooses to vote against the chairman the majority has power to set policy. While this is unheard of in our lifetimes in the US and in countries like Japan, it happens all the time in the UK.  Mervyn King, the former Governor of the Bank of England, was outvoted many times.

Given the well documented ability of Larry Summers to anger people around him, his chairmanship could lead to a situation where the chairman is not the person who decides where monetary policy is going next.  The market already has a hard enough time figuring out what the Fed is going to do when one person is nominally in charge. It would be interesting to see how inefficient the market gets if Summers takes over yet Federal Reserve officials don't follow his lead as closely as he might like/expect.

Given my occupation, that's a good reason for me to hope that Summers becomes the next Fed chair.