Senate confirms new Fed vice chairman, 2 CFTC commissioners

Richard Clarida will play a critical support role as the new vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

The Senate confirmed Mr. Clarida's appointment by a 69-26 vote Tuesday.

Mr. Clarida, managing director and global strategic adviser at Pacific Investment Management Co., was most recently the C. Lowell Harriss Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1988. He served as a senior staff economist with President Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, and assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush. He will fill the remainder of a term vacated by Stanley Fischer, who stepped down as vice chairman in October. The term expires in February 2022.

Mr. Clarida will be supporting Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. The vice chairman is often tasked with special projects at the request of the chairman. Along with the president of the New York Fed, who acts as the central bank's eyes and ears on Wall Street, the vice chairman typically forms a key voting bloc with the chairman on both policy and strategy.

Mr. Clarida is the fourth member on the seven-member board. President Donald Trump has nominated two others to join the board, Marvin Goodfriend and Michelle Bowman. Both nominations have been approved by the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee but have yet to receive a full Senate vote.

Ms. Bowman currently serves as the Kansas state bank commissioner and previously served as an executive at Farmers & Drovers Bank. The Senate Banking Committee approved her nomination in June by an 18-7 vote. The committee approved Mr. Goodfriend's nomination in January in a party-line vote, 13-12. He is the Friends of Allan Meltzer Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business and also serves on the Fed's Shadow Open Market Committee.

Kenneth E. Bentsen Jr., Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association president and CEO, congratulated Mr. Clarida and said in a statement that his organization looks "forward to working with him on issues that enhance and maintain deep and efficient capital markets and wish him success in this new role."

The Fed is expected to raise interest rates for the third time this year at its next meeting on Sept. 25-26.

The Senate also confirmed Dawn DeBerry Stump and Dan Michael Berkovitz as commissioners on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in a voice vote Tuesday. Ms. Stump is president of Stump Strategic, a consulting firm, and is a former vice president at NYSE Euronext. Her term will expire in 2022. Mr. Berkovitz is a partner and co-chairman of the futures and derivatives practice at law firm WilmerHale, His term will expire in 2023.

Once Ms. Stump and Mr. Berkovitz are sworn in, the CFTC, helmed by Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo, will have a full five-member board for the first time since 2014.