He is an outstanding choice. He will fill the seat vacated by Roger Ferguson which expires in 2014. Governor Mark Olson recently announced his resignation which is effective today. Olson did not attend this week's meeting. Read the NY Times article on the Mishkin nomination. A Bernanke and Mishkin combination lends a lot of academic credibility to the Fed. I'm very pleased with the news.
Professor Mishkin, 55, has been a prolific author of books and articles about central banking and would add weight within the Fed to backers of "inflation targeting," a policy of basing decisions on explicit and publicly disclosed benchmarks for inflation.
On that issue, Professor Mishkin would be a close ally of Ben S. Bernanke, the new Fed chairman. Mr. Bernanke has been a champion of inflation targeting, an approach that his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, viewed as too rigid and that some Fed governors continue to oppose.
Professor Mishkin and Mr. Bernanke collaborated on a book and several articles about the issue, arguing that the strategy would make the Federal Reserve's decision-making more open and predictable.
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Professor Mishkin is believed to be a political independent, and has had almost no involvement with Republican politics. Donald L. Kohn, whom Mr. Bush recently named as vice chairman of the Fed, is a political independent who was a senior staff official at the Fed before being named a Fed governor in 2002.
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