President Donald Trump plans to nominate Nellie Liang to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the White House announced late Wednesday.
Ms. Liang, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution and a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund's monetary and capital markets department, would serve the remainder of former Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen's 14-year term expiring Jan. 31, 2024. An exact nomination date has yet to be announced.
Ms. Liang worked at the Fed from 2006 to 2017. Following the financial crisis in 2010, she started — and served as the director of — the Office of Financial Stability Policy and Research, which became the Division of Financial Stability in 2016. She is a member of the Congressional Budget Office's panel of economic advisers and was a lecturer at the Yale School of Management. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in economics from the University of Notre Dame and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland.
Jeffrey R. Brown, dean of the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has co-authored papers with Ms. Liang and said she's an "economist's economist" because she's not ideological and is "focused on data."
"Since the financial crisis she's played a very important role in understanding the whole financial regulatory framework and issues around systemic risk," Mr. Brown said. "There's a lot of great economists in the world but I'm really delighted with her nomination."
In July, Ms. Liang, along with colleagues from the IMF, published a paper that contended looser financial conditions can stimulate growth in the short term but also increase the chances of an economic slowdown in the "medium run."
Mr. Trump has now nominated a person to fill each seat on the seven-member board. There are three vacancies. He previously nominated Marvin Goodfriend and Michelle Bowman, whose nominations have each been approved by the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee but have yet to receive a full Senate vote.
Another of Mr. Trump's nominees, Richard Clarida, was confirmed by the Senate in August as the board's vice chairman. The former managing director and global strategic adviser at Pacific Investment Management Co. was officially sworn in Monday.
The Fed meets on Sept. 25-26 and is expected to raise interest rates for the third time this year.
